Apparatus for measuring radiation

Tender description

Public Health England (PHE) is planning to award a contract for the provision of ‘Portable Equipment Capable of Measuring Radioactive Material in People in the Event of an Emergency’ to Ametek (GB) Ltd. Their Micro-Detective product is the only unit on the market to offer a 50 x 30mm germanium crystal in a portable electromechanically cooled package as well as having an integrated screen which allows it to perform the following functions: — Displaying and accumulating data, — Zoom in/out spectra, — Determine peak energies on the screen, — Calibrate using Cs-137 without any additional software, — Perform the isotope ID without any external data connections. The initial requirement will be for 2 detectors but there is scope to purchase up to 3 more in the duration of the 3 year contract. PHE has a requirement for portable units to measure radioactive contamination in members of the public. These units must be based on high resolution radionuclide identifiers which use hyper-pure germanium detectors. Following an incident where radioactive material is dispersed into the environment it may be necessary to measure the levels of contamination in people and this would be done at a Radiation Monitoring Unit. The units required to make these measurements must have particular properties so that they are suitable for use at a RMU, which are: — they must have the highest possible resolution to allow unambiguous identification of all radionuclides in complex mixtures and separation from natural background radionuclides, — be easily adapted for use as a portable Whole Body Monitor (WBM) by addition of a laptop PC running multichannel analyser (MCA) emulation software, — weigh no more than 10 kg to allow easy manual handling by a single person, — they must not require cryogenic gas (i.e. liquid nitrogen) for cooling as this is hazardous to staff and members of the public, — be powered by batteries as mains electricity may not be available at a RMU, — be based on hyper-pure germanium detectors with a diameter of 50 ± 2 mm and a depth of 30 ± 3 mm to allow use of previously determined efficiency factors for people, — be capable of displaying and accumulating spectra with the ability to zoom in/out, change vertical scale and have a moveable cursor (to allow peak energies to be determined) on the instrument, — be capable of being energy calibrated using only a source of caesium-137 without using external software, — be capable of the identification of a wide range of radionuclides without connection to a PC so that they can be easily used for unambiguous radionuclide identification following a radiation emergency.