Present Status of Neutron Monitoring for Personnel Protection. An Introductory Review

The most significant advances in the physical dosimetry of neutrons during the past twenty years have been: (1) the development of proportional counter techniques; (2) the improvement of threshold and activation detector techniques; (3) the development of spectrometers; and (4) the development and improvement of solid-state detectors. However, some of the most widely used detectors of the 1940's are still used (namely, nuclear emulsions and ionization chambers). Just as important as the instrumentation has been the search for greater understanding of the principles of radiation interaction with matter, but the rate of progress has improved rapidly during the last five years. Future dosimetry systems will be based more on solid-state detectors, both active and passive types. Within a few years, automatic reading and data processing will be used widely with solid-state detectors to yield an instantaneous indication of the dose received by personnel from the time of the last analysis and also to yield the total dose accumulated by them from the commencement of radiation work up to the time of reading. (author)