Development of active environmental and personal neutron dosemeters.

For neutron dosimetry in the radiation environment surrounding nuclear facilities, two types of environmental neutron dosemeters, the high-sensitivity rem counter and the high-sensitivity multi-moderator, the so-called Bonner ball, have been developed and the former is commercially available from Fuji Electric Co. By using these detectors, the cosmic ray neutrons at sea level have been sequentially measured for about 3 y to investigate the time variation of neutron spectrum and ambient dose equivalent influenced by cosmic and terrestrial effects. Our Bonner ball has also been selected as the neutron detector in the International Space Station and has already been used to measure neutrons in the US experimental module. The real time wide-range personal neutron dosemeter which uses two silicon semiconductor detectors has been developed for personal dosimetry and is commercially available from Fuji Electric Co. This dosemeter has good characteristics, fitted to the fluence-to-dose conversion factor in the energy range from thermal energies to several tens of mega-electron-volts and is now widely used in various nuclear facilities.