Rapid detailed characterization of concrete shielding blocks utilizing internal natural radinuclides for calibration

Following many years of productive research, the 184-inch Cyclotron, the SuperHILAC, and the BEVALAC accelerators at the Berkeley Laboratory were closed, leaving thousands of concrete shielding blocks available for reuse, recycling, or disposal. The process history of these blocks precludes free release pending radiological characterization. This paper describes a procedure whereby a high efficiency shielded germanium spectrometer is used to rapidly characterize natural and man-made activity within the blocks. The spectrometer is moved up to the block and 5 minutes of data are collected at the point on the block that registers highest on a micro-R meter. Sensitivity is better than 1 pCi/g (0.037 Bq/g) for Co-60 and Eu-152, the prominent man-made activities observed. One-time calibration of the detector system is obtained from a sample of concrete, drilled with a hammer drill, counted in our low-background facility, and compared to crushed rock with known U, Th, and K activity. A simple relationship exists between the counts/minute observed in a characteristic gamma-ray peak and the activity in the block.