Study of Nuclear Radiation Counting Systems

Abstract

Nuclear radiation counting systems are used for measuring the nuclear radiation, depending on the application the counting systems can be roughly grouped into Single channel analyzer (SCA) systems and Multi-channel analyzer (MCA) systems. The measurement of radiation is distinguished into two categories. The first category is measuring the number of radiations or intensity which depends on the activity of the source of radiation. The second category is measuring the energy distribution of incoming radiation which is characteristic to the type of the source of radiation. The number of output pulses from detector is proportional to the number of incoming radiation so the intensity of radiation can be measured just by counting those electric pulses which are produced by the detector. The single channel analyzer system is used to carry out intensity measurements by using threshold window (one energy range only). On the other hand the spectrum of radiation can give information about the intensity at each energy level or energy peaks of the incoming radiation. The multi-channel analyzer is used to carry out energy distribution spectrum measurements. In terms of internal functioning, multi-channel analyzer is different from single channel analyzer. The multi-channel analyzer performs the same task with many of threshold windows, thus it doesn’t need to count pulses at each threshold window individually, therefore making the process faster.