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International Standards for Radioprotection Dosimeters

09.08.2007

In the field of radioprotection dosimeters, globalisation has been taking place for several years already. Thereby, one important control instrument is standardisation, which has been realised internationally by the "International Electrotechnical Commission" (IEC) and, since 2001, also at European level by the "European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization" (CENELEC). The standard IEC/EN 61526 for direct reading (electronic) personal dose equivalent meters for photon, beta and neutron radiation, and its counterpart, IEC 62387, for passive dosimeters for photon and beta radiation are new milestones in this area. The latter has not yet been adopted as a European standard but it is planned to. From a dosimetric point of view, the two standards have been aligned and, for the first time, take into account uncertainty determination according to the "Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement". Another innovation is that only the measuring procedures and the admissible measurement deviations are defined for the corresponding influence quantities. For a given dosimeter, the manufacturer can design the admissible ranges within which the influence quantities must comply with the defined measurement deviations flexibly; they must only be larger than or equal to the defined minimum ranges.

PTB&requo;s dosimeter requirements are largely compatible with these standards; where some differences remain, alignment is in progress.