Energy windowing is an alarm algorithm method that can be applied to plastic scintillator-based radiation portal monitors (RPMs) to reduce the alarm rates from naturally occurring radioactive material. Various implementations of energy windowing have been tested and documented by industry and at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and are available in commercial RPMs built by several manufacturers. Moreover, energy windowing is being used in deployed RPMs to reduce nuisance alarms during the screening of cargo. This paper describes energy windowing algorithms and demonstrates how these algorithms succeed when applied to “controlled” experimental measurements and “real world” vehicle-traffic data. (PIET-43741-TM-281)
Revised: April 6, 2011 |
Published: May 10, 2006
Citation
Ely J.H., R.T. Kouzes, J.E. Schweppe, E.R. Siciliano, D.M. Strachan, and D.R. Weier. 2006.The Use of Energy Windowing to Discriminate SNM from NORM in Radiation Portal Monitors.Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research. Section A, Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment 560, no. 2:373-387.PNNL-SA-44680.