THE RESPONSE OF THE PHE NEUTRON PERSONAL DOSEMETER IN TERMS OF THE PROPOSED ICRU PERSONAL DOSE EQUIVALENT

The ICRU is considering amending the definition of the operational quantity for personnel monitoring. The present work investigates the impact of the proposed change on the PHE neutron personal dosemeter, which utilizes electrochemically etched PADC and is currently optimized in terms of Hp(10). The energy-dependent dose response characteristics of the dosemeter, and its performance in realistic workplace neutron fields, are calculated and compared for both the current and proposed dose quantities, for both frontal and rotationally isotropic fields. Adoption of the proposed quantity would make the dosemeter more sensitive to normally incident neutrons, but it would require some modification to ensure that it is able to meet the recommendations of the current ISO standard at all energies and its directional dependence of response would be poorer. The implications of this are discussed.