Calibration of CR-39 for radon-related parameters using sealed cup technique

Effective radium content, mass and areal radon exhalation rates of soil and rock samples are important radon-related parameters and can be used as a better indicator of radon risk. A sealed cup fitted to a CR-39 detector and to the sample under measurement is an advantageous passive device for the measurement of these parameters. The main factors affecting the results are the detector calibration factor and the sample weight. The results of an active technique (Lucas cell) and the CR-39 detector have been found to be correlated resulting in a reliable detector calibration factor. The result illustrates the dependence of the CR-39 calibration factor with the sample weight which is difficult to use in practice, because each sample weight has its own calibration factor of CR-39. It is reported to demonstrate the advantage of a back diffusion correction. After correcting the results for back diffusion effects, one obtains an approximately constant calibration factor for the sample volumes up to one-third the total sealed cup volume. For this condition the calibration factor is equal to 0.237 track cm-2 per Bq m-3 d with about 1% uncertainty. (authors)