Advances on research, development and applications of SSNTDs in radiation protection at AEOI

Iran is one of the countries which started early in 1967 on research into, and the development and application to radiation protection of solid state nuclear track detectors (SSNTDs). Since then extensive efforts have been made at the National Radiation Protection Department (NRPD) in the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) on national development and international cooperation to promote the application of SSNTDs in this field. These include: efficient track registration of alphas, recoils and fission fragments in different SSNTD materials; advances and new findings on chemical and electrochemical etching (ECE); the introduction of new neutron personnel dosimeters such as the 237Np/10 μm polycarbonate combination (PC) foils coupled with a spark counting technique; ECE of recoils; Neutriran Albedo Neutron Personnel Dosimetry; neutron depth dose measurements in particular at air-tissue and bone-tissue interfaces; neutron contamination measurements in high energy x-ray beams of medical accelerators; development of a nationwide indoor radon monitoring program and spectrometry of radon daughters in PC; the discovery of some new phenomena in ECE; education and training. Some of these are presented and discussed in this paper. (author)