Accident dose estimation using porcelain. A comparison between different thermoluminescence methods

Accident dose estimation using the pre-dose technique on the 110°C peak in porcelain has been used since 1984. The disadvantage of this technique is that the reservoir traps appear to begin to saturate for doses around 1 Gy. This has limitations in regions of high fallout doses such as the contaminated settlements in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone with fallout doses often above 1 Gy. When doses are added to measure the growth curve the total absorbed dose falls into the saturation region. Samples of porcelain fitments were collected from such settlements and it was observed that the 230°C peak in the thermoluminescence (TL) glow-curve for some of them was strong enough to carry out the simple additive dose procedure. In addition, the 230°C peak pre-doses in a similar way. This enabled us to carry out three dose evaluations on each sample. It was observed that both pre-dose evaluations yielded a similar result. The results of the simple additive dose in most cases are in agreement within error limits with the results obtained using pre-dose techniques, although in some cases some discrepancies were observed.