Some aspects of planning intercomparisons of individual monitors for external radiation exposure

The work contributes the Federal Republic of Germany's point of view to the discussion of procedures and the collection of data for intercomparisons of individual monitors for external radiation exposure. At present, film dosemeters are most often used to monitor whole body exposures to photon radiation (97%), glass dosemeters play a minor role (3%). Thermoluminescence dosemeters are only used for monitoring partial body exposure. The planning of intercomparisons, both of dosemeter systems and dosemeter services, should be strictly guided by the general objectives of individual monitoring which are summarized. The lack of a translation of these objectives into detailed detector-independent requirements for dosemeter systems makes any intercomparison difficult. It would probably be more efficient to evaluate such requirements prior to any intercomparison. Regarding national activities, an intercomparison of photon dosemeter systems is in progress in which their suitability to measure some recently proposed phantom-related dosimetric quantities is being studied. Another intercomparison of photon dosemeters to study their dose equivalent response for slow neutrons was completed in 1984. The authorized dosemeter services are routinely controlled every year by irradiating samples of 30 photon dosemeters of each type. At present, a recently developed universal neutron dosemeter system is under test by 4 services. (author)