The Development of a new "Water Monitoring Car"

Umezawa, Katsuhiro* ; Kato, Mitsugu; Tanabe, Tsutomu; Wada, Takao

We are working on the development of new mobile water monitoring equipment, resulting in a novel all-in-one package - the "Water Monitoring Car". This monitoring car is now in production and scheduled for completion in March, 2014. It is designed for in-situ -ray spectrometry for Cs and Cs quantification in water in Fukushima, Japan. This is especially important for areas where it is difficult to take out samples but radioactivity measurements in water in different environments are required for returning residents. Such environments include storage reservoirs for farming and sources of drinking water to houses from mountain runoff. The equipment now used incorporates a Ge semiconductor detector with a spiral-shaped tube molded around it. Water is pumped from the source of interest via hoses, passed through this tube and then discharged. Incorporated lead shielding around the tube has a thickness of 10 cm. Such optimized shielding and the higher resolution of the Ge detector are expected to result in both a lower MDA and higher accuracy at low radiocesium concentrations.