Retrospective dosimetry with ceramics

This paper reviews recent progress that has been made in the application of luminescence techniques with ceramic materials to the problem of dose reconstruction at: Hiroshima and Nagasaki; areas downwind of the Nevada Test Site; regions of Belarus, the Russian Federation and the Ukraine contaminated by fallout from Chernobyl; settlements along the Techa River affected by releases from the Mayak facility at Chelyabinsk; Kiisa, Estonia where a stolen ¹³⁷Cs irradiator source was discovered. Luminescence has an increasingly important role in radiological health studies at such sites because of the ability of the method to measure dose retrospectively in areas where radiation monitoring was lacking or sporadic following the incident. Commonly produced ceramics such as brick, tile and porcelain fittings and artefacts have been used to determine the integrated external gamma radiation dose (the transient dose). Evaluation of the reliability and accuracy with which the transient dose can be estimated when it approaches and drops below the level of the integrated natural background dose (<50 mGy for ceramic samples of age 20–30 y) is the subject of current research. In addition to various improvements in the performance of the experimental techniques and understanding of the luminescence properties of the minerals, other developments include improved integration with the requirements of dose reconstruction by the combined use of luminescence and computational modelling.