40 years of TLD badge monitoring experience and operational dose quantities

Tsujimura, Norio   

The TLD badge, a personal dosimeter using a thermoluminescence dosemeter, currently in operation at the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Engineering Laboratories of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA-NCL), was developed in collaboration with Matsushita Industrial Co., Ltd. (now Panasonic System Solutions Japan Co., Ltd.), and was put into operation in 1982. Since then, the TLD badge has been used not only at NCL but also in Japan and overseas for a long time. However, the TLD badge system will no longer be accepted for new production by the manufacturer in 2019, and maintenance and repair services for the TLD readers will cease in 2027. In addition, a performance accreditation system for personal dosimetry will be introduced in Japan, and accredited personal dosemeters will be required under the revised enforcement regulations of the RI Law (from October 2023). Given these changes in the circumstance, NCL has decided to abandon the in-house measurement service and switch to commercially available accredited personal dosemeters in the future. In this paper, the development history and design concept of the TLD badge are outlined along with the historical development of the operational quantities, and the findings obtained from more than 40 years of operational experience with the TLD badge are presented.