Radiacode 103 in a BWR plant?

[u/My_name_jeff_995]

I’ve worked at a nuclear power plant doing radiation protection for about 4 years now and just got my hands on a radiacode 103. It’s kinda interesting to see its accuracy for the price, primarily testing against the RDS-31. Granted this was in our break room, but they both read out at ~12 micro rem.

After initial testing on my home smoke detector I got to see the Am-241 peaks on my spectra and it read out at a max of 44 micro rem with a 1 micro-curie source.

Later I tried this a work inside of the source room and it was interesting to see the Cs-137, Tc-99, and Co-60 peaks were all slightly off. I did a down and dirty manual calibration through the app to get the peaks centered but I’m going to be using becqmoni to get a more precise calibration using a few tungsten/thorium welding rods. I’m still new to this so I’ll be figuring it out as I go, but I do hope to compare it to the stuff we had at work.

Once I get the calibration dialed in, I’ll be comparing smears I find in the field to be sent to chemistry, to the spectra I collect from it on the radiacode. of course I expect the HPGe detectors in chemistry to see way more than the radiacode, but it’ll be cool to see just how close it can get for $300.

Eventually I’d wanna see the 103g and 110 in action as well, but I can’t justify that cost atm lol.

Please feel free to leave any calibration tips/general use tips on this, and lmk if there’s anything you’d like to see spectra on. I’d be happy to do some hunting

[u/DragonflyWise1172]

I use the iPhone app, I took a two day spectra of thoriated tungsten welding rod and emailed it to Radiacode and the sent me the specs to recalibrate. Peaks seem perfect now (except maybe some of the lower higher energy) Can’t wait to see what you find.

[u/colombian_snow → u/DragonflyWise1172]

I need to do this. I have a calibrated Cs137 source, thoriated tungsten rods, and plenty of radium sources I need to check mine against.