Automatically processed alpha-track radon monitor
AssigneeThe United States of America as represented by the United States Department of Energy
InventorG. Harold Langner, Jr.
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Abstract
An automatically processed alpha-track radon monitor is provided which includes a housing having an aperture allowing radon entry, and a filter that excludes the entry of radon daughters into the housing. A flexible track registration material is located within the housing that records alpha-particle emissions from the decay of radon and radon daughters inside the housing. The flexible track registration material is capable of being spliced such that the registration material from a plurality of monitors can be spliced into a single strip to facilitate automatic processing of the registration material from the plurality of monitors. A process for the automatic counting of radon registered by a radon monitor is also provided.
Claims3
A process for the automatic counting of radon registered by a radon monitor comprising:
- a) providing a flexible strip of alpha-track registration material capable of recording alpha-particle emissions from the decay of radon and radon daughters in a housing which is permeable to radon but which is impermeable to radon daughters;
- b) placing a plurality of said housings having registration material in a radon containing environment for a period of time to monitor for the presence and amount of radon in the environment;
- c) removing the strip after radon monitoring from each housing and splicing the strip to a plurality of other strips to form a single elongated strip;
- d) feeding the single elongated strip of registration material through a processing means which reveals the alpha-tracks on the material and counts the alpha-tracks to provide a measurement of the amount of radon in the monitored area.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.