A compact industrial PC based aerial gamma spectrometry system

In the event of a major nuclear reactor accident or release of large quantities of radioactive material due to any other reason, there may be radioactivity deposit over a large area which is to be assessed quickly to initiate prompt counter control measures, including evacuation of the public or restrictions of agriculture produce from the affected area. Aerial gamma spectrometric survey can be used as a reliable and effective technique to assess the ground contamination for demarcating the affected areas. This technique can also be used for plume tracking, searching radioactive sources for mapping the background in Emergency Preparedness Zone around a nuclear plant periodically. Recently a compact AGSS has been developed with two Add-on cards in an Industrial PC having LCD monitor. This compact AGSS is vibration and shock proof thus suitable for aerial monitoring. The compact design has been necessitated to enable its quick and easy deployment even in small air crafts/helicopter. The paper describes the design of this new compact AGSS, the system software developed for coordinated initiation of various functions of the system and software package for off- line processing of the stored gamma spectra