Fast and Radiation Hard Scintillators for High Dose Detection

The event of nuclear explosion generates harsh radiation conditions, evaluation of which is critical in protecting the military and civilian personnel from serious harm.  Due to these harsh conditions only very simple methods of radiation assessment are employed, such as measurement of equivalent dose.  Improvements to current instrumentation are sought that would provide energy resolved dose information, as well as isotope identification capabilities.  This requires new advanced scintillation materials capable of very high count-rate operation with enough light yield to provide adequate energy resolution for isotope identification.  The goal of the proposed project is to develop ultra-fast scintillation materials, demonstrate their high count-rate and necessary energy resolution capabilities, and construct and evaluate prototype detectors.  Adequate radiation hardness will also be demonstrated for the selected scintillation materials.