Energy and angular dependence of the personal dosemeter in use at ITN-DPRSN

In this paper the characterization of the dosimetry system and of the personal dosemeter in terms of the stability of the reader calibration factors and of the linearity of the response for the 137Cs reference radiation is presented. The energy and angular dependence of the whole body dosemeter are also shown. The energy dependence was determined performing irradiations with the X-ray narrow series beams N30, N40, N60, N80, N100, N120 and with the gamma reference radiations of 137Cs and 60Co [ISO 4037-1, 1996. X and Gamma Reference Radiation for Calibrating Dosemeters and Doserate Meters and for Determining Their Response as a Function of Photon Energy-Part 1: Radiation Characteristics and Production Methods. International Organization for Standardization, Geneva] in terms of Hp(10) incident on the ISO water slab phantom. The angular dependence of the dosemeter was determined for the angles 0 deg., ±20 deg., ±40 deg. and ±60 deg. with normal using the above mentioned radiation fields. All irradiations were performed at the Laboratorio de Metrologia das Radiacoes lonizantes of ITN-DPRSN. The experiments presented in this paper show the thermoluminescence dosimetry (TLD) system is stable and presents a linear behaviour over and extended dose range. The measurements allowed the determination of the energy dependence at normal incidence and of the angular dependence of the dosemeter currently in use. Further studies are being carried out in order to implement correction factors for supralinearity and low energy measurements