Rate of long term bleaching in FK 51 optical glass darkened by Co60 ionizing radiation at dose rates of 10 krad/hr and 7 rad/hr

A previous paper presented long term bleaching data on various glasses exposed to 10.6 krad of ionizing radiation. All the glasses reported except FK 51 have readily available `G` glass equivalents that are stabilized to the natural space environment. Yet, FK 51, because of its location on the Abbe diagram is extremely useful in certain lens design applications. To more fully explore the bleaching of FK 51, after the initial dose of 10.6 krad at 11.8 krad/hour, we irradiated three more samples at a similar dose rate but to different total doses. Since the dose rate for this study was significantly higher than the dose rate anticipated for glasses in as shielded space-based lens system (tilde 3 rad/day), additional data were obtained at a lower rate of 7 rad/hour. While this dose rate is still higher than the anticipated operational rate, it is more than 1000 times lower than the dose 011 011 011 rate used for our initial studies. The bleaching rate for the samples exposed at the lower dose rate is considerably less than for the samples exposed at the higher rate