Radioactivity Portal Monitor: An actual application and its unconventional detector

A Radioactivity Portal Monitor is an instrument designed to be used at traffic check points to detect the presence of ionizing radiation in goods, vehicles, people, in critical places such as those at border road crossing, airports and seaports, the entrance at nuclear facilities etc. and alert the officer to the presence of radioactive and nuclear material. We have developed and built, and is in operation a Radioactivity Portal Monitor for gamma radiation. The detector and the associated electronics does not follow a conventional design concept and is based on a pressurized ionization chamber with a very large sensitive volume (60 liters) and a very large length (2 meters), and a very low level DC electronics (fAmp). The System is simple, and its operational characteristics are excellent. The reference radiation level is the background radiation, which is continuously measured, and compared with the radiation level measured when a subject (vehicle, person, good) goes trough the Monitor. The system automatically takes a decision, and alert the officer with an alarm signal if the detected radiation level is larger than the reference (dynamical) level. We will describe the designed system and some of its characterization results will be shown (author)