# ANIMMA 2021

21-25 June 2021
Clarion Congress Hotel Prague
Europe/Prague timezone
The ANIMMA 2021 Registration is OPEN!

## Modelling the response of an in-situ CdTe detector to radionuclides in groundwater.

Not scheduled
20m
3rd floor (Clarion Congress Hotel Prague)

### 3rd floor

#### Clarion Congress Hotel Prague

Freyova 945/33, 190 00 Prague 9 - Vysočany
Poster 08 Decommissioning, Dismantling and Remote Handling

### Speaker

TURKINGTON, graeme (university of glasgow)

### Description

This research examines the potential deployment of a cadmium telluride strontium-90 detector in groundwater boreholes at nuclear decommissioning sites. This is represents a novel approach to monitoring strontium-90 contamination at decommissioning sites such as Sellafield, and has the potential to reduce lifetime monitoring costs while providing information on a significantly reduced timescale. A Geant4 simulation was used to model the deployment of the detector in a contaminated groundwater borehole. It was found that the detector was sensitive to strontium-90, yttrium-90, caesium-137 and potassium-40 decay, some of the significant beta emitters found at Sellafield. However, the device showed no sensitivity to carbon-14 decay, due to the inability of the weak beta emission to penetrate both the groundwater and the detector shielding. The limit of detector for such a sensor when looking at solely strontium-90 decay would be 323 BqL$^{-1}$ after a 1 hour measurement and 66 BqL$^{-1}$ after a 24 hour measurement. Existing techniques are capable of examining strontium-90 decay below the World Health Organisations safe drinking water limit of 10 BqL$^{-1}$. A GaAs sensor with twice the surface area, but 0.3 % of the thickness was modelled for comparison. Using this sensor, sensitivity was increased, such that the limit of detection for strontium-90 was 91 BqL$^{-1}$ after 1 hour and 18 BqL$^{-1}$ after 24 hours. However, this sensor sacrifices the potential to identify the present radionuclides by their end-point energy.

### Primary author

TURKINGTON, graeme (university of glasgow)

### Presentation Materials

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