Accidental inhalation of radioactive contaminants is a serious health problem amongst personnel at various facilities dealing with such materials. This includes nuclear power plants, nuclear weapons facilities, mining industry, nuclear material processing plants, and various similar installations. This problem is particularly acute for actinide contaminants (such as uranium, plutonium, and americium) which are insoluble and therefore are retained in lungs for a long period. Serious health complications such as lung cancer, and pulmonary neoplasms are frequently observed upon accidental inhalation of such radionuclides. Treatment (such as lung lavage) is available to prevent such complications, but it is necessary to obtain an accurate, in-vivo characterization of the nature and extent of the inhaled radionuclide particles in order to determine the proper treating procedure. Hence the goal of the proposed effort is to develop a new type of larger, high resolution, high efficiency germanium detector in order to provide effective detection, localization as well as quantification of the radionuclides inhaled by workers. The proposed effort is expected to lead to a simpler, higher performance, and more economical germanium detector system for lung screening, and in view of Canberra's participation, we are confident of its commercial success.
Lung burden screening and related health physics, environmental monitoring, non-destructive testing, astronomy, nuclear physics, synchrotron studies and related materials research.
