A count rate based contamination control standard for electron accelerators

Accelerators of sufficient energy and particle fluence can produce radioactivity as an unwanted byproduct. The radioactivity is typically imbedded in structural materials but may also be removable from surfaces. Many of these radionuclides decay by positron emission or electron capture; they often have long half lives and produce photons of low energy and yield making detection by standard devices difficult. The contamination control limit used throughout the US nuclear industry and the Department of Energy is 1,000 disintegrations per minute. This limit is based on the detection threshold of pancake type Geiger-Mueller probes for radionuclides of relatively high radiotoxicity, such as cobalt-60. Several radionuclides of concern at a high energy electron accelerator are compared in terms of radiotoxicity with radionuclides commonly found in the nuclear industry. Based on this comparison, a count-rate based contamination control limit and associated measurement strategy is proposed which provides adequate detection of contamination at accelerators without an increase in risk