Abstract
The Questionaire inquiry was carried out on the use of personnel monitors for external radiations in Japan. 400 institutions (including 71 universities, 9 electric power plants, 3 nuclear fuel companies, 13 non-destructive inspection companies, 58 industrial institutes, 36 national and public institutes, 94 hospitals, 29 pharmaceutical facilities, and others) were selected to send the questionaires, and 179 (45%) were answered and returned. Approximately 70% of the establishments replying had less than 50 employees. Film badges (FB) were used in about 90% institutions as a personnel dosimeter, TLD's in 13% and fluoro-glass dosimeters (FGD) in 6%. About 20% indicated the possibility of using FGD for personnel monitors in the future in lieu of FB, while 45% suggested TLD. The users' requests for the improvement of monitors were; (1) measurement of lower dose level (54%), (2) less expensive monitors (48%), (3) higher accuracy for low energy X, γ (37%), (4) monitors for detecting spot exposure (32%), (5) more uniform quality (30%), (6) higher accuracy for β-dose evaluation (30%), (7) improvement of reproducibility (29%), (8) improvement of mechanical strength (20%), (9) higher accuracy for neutron dose evaluation (12%), (10) higher accuracy for high energy X, γ (8%).
