Universal Solid State Radiation Detector

Radiation detectors are routinely used in safeguards, waste assay, health physics and many other fields. While a lot of safeguards applications use spectroscopic detectors to identify, quantify and account for special nuclear materials, there is also a need to just know whether the radiation present in a given situation includes alpha, beta, x-ray, gamma, and/or neutron radiation. In health physics, this information can be obtained with survey meters typically with a separate probe for each type of radiation. There are probes that can measure alpha and beta radiation at the same time. Likewise, there are probes that can measure beta and gamma radiation or x-ray and gamma radiation at the same time. But, there are no probes that can measure all of these types of radiation at the same time. With its partners, AQUILA has been investigating the use of a solid-state detector that has been adapted from solar cell technology to build a single universal radiation detector that can measure all of these types of radiations. Since solar cells can easily be manufactured as large surface areas, a specific adaptation of the technology can include a portion of the overall surface area for each radiation type, thus allowing a concept of a universal single probe for all of them. Use of solid state manufacturing techniques has the potential of making this new type of detector quite inexpensive since we can leverage the existing manufacturing infrastructure. Likewise, use of solid-state detector material eliminates the problems many thin window gas filled detectors have of not being able to ship them by air. Using its 25 years of experience in safeguards appliances, AQUILA is developing the necessary detector hardware, analysis algorithms, and communications interfaces to display and transmit the results of these new types of detectors. In this presentation, AQUILA will present the basic concepts of this new detector type, the results obtained to date with different adaptations of it, and tentative thoughts on the concepts of operations (CONOPS) to use it.