The response of survey meters to pulsed radiation fields

The response of most survey meters to steady radiation fields is fairly well known and documented. However, hardly any data is available in the literature regarding the response of these instruments to pulsed radiation. Pulsed radiation fields are encountered, e.g., in the vicinity of linear electron accelerators or klystrons. An instrument that ordinarily responds well to the average dose rate spread out evenly in time may not be able to cope with such a high dose rate. Instruments which have long dead times such as Geiger Mueller and proportional counters tend to become saturated in such fields and only count repetition rate. Ionization chambers are less influenced, however, they must be operated with adequate voltage to overcome recombination losses. Scintillation survey meters may become non-linear at higher dose rates for pulsed radiation because the photomultiplier cannot handle the instantaneous currents that are required. Because of the need to test the response of different radiation detection instruments to pulsed fields, a pulsed x-ray facility has been built (I/sub p/87). A brief description of this facility is given along with tests of several different instruments. 5 refs., 4 figs., 1 tab