EXTENSION OF THE SENSITIVITY RANGE OF NUC LEAR RADIATION DETECTORS

It is well known from pratice that there is no radiation detector whic h covers the entire range to be measured. Either several detectors, or a single detector in various operation modes (pulsed or current) are to be used. The purpose of our research was to find relatively simple techniques to cover a wide range (7-8 orders of magnitude) using a sin gle detector. In the present paper the types of nuclear detectors are reviewed, the interactions between radioactive radiation and the mater ial of the detector are examined, and the methods are looked for to ex tent the measuring range of a detector to higher sensitivity domains. The results are demonstrated by the example of a universal nuclear mea suring instrument, the GAMMACONT.