IMPLEMENTING A NEW DIFFUSION BATTERY FOR RADON PROGENY DOSE DETERMINATION

The Australian Radiation Laboratory Diffusion Battery was created in 1992 to evaluate radon progeny dose coefficients based on measured aerosol conditions. The Australian Radiation Laboratory Diffusion Battery used filters, alpha counters and a legacy laptop computer running a PowerBASIC program that controlled the hardware. Because technology has evolved, the original system is not supportable. A replacement system consisting of separate hardware and software modules has been created. The hardware counting module is based on the proven design of the Effective Dosimeter, using modern detectors, electronics, flow sensors, a microcontroller and a secure digital memory card for data storage. The analysis of the data has been implemented in an Excel spreadsheet with Visual Basic for Applications coding to do loops and iterations. Tests of the software with current and historic data sets, all taken with the original Australian Radiation Laboratory Diffusion Battery system, have validated a modern, supportable diffusion battery system.