A gridded ionization chamber for measurement of environmental radioactivity

In order to detect low level alpha radioactivities in various natural materials, a single gridded ionization chamber was constructed. This chamber of the Frischgrid type has a very large source area of 200 cm2 and provides a resolution of about 79 keV for 5.48 MeV alpha particles of a Americium-241 source. It was attempted to eliminate the background pulses, by making use of cathode pulses. The resultant background counting rate was in the order of 3 counts per hour, which corresponds to a good figure of merit of about 106. As a preliminary measurement, radioactive contamination levels in a sample of aluminum have been measured. It was found that (0.014 +- 0.011) pCi of Radium-226 is contained in 1 gram of the sample. (author)