title: An open-walled ionization chamber appropriate to tritium monitoring for glovebox.
abstract: An open-walled ionization chamber is developed to monitor the tritium concentration in gloveboxes in tritium processing systems. Two open walls are used to replace the sealed wall in common ionization chambers, through which the tritium gas can diffuse into the chamber without the aid of pumps and pipelines. Some basic properties of the chamber are examined to evaluate its performance. Results turn out that an open-walled chamber of 1 l in volume shows a considerably flat plateau over 700 V for a range of tritium concentration. The chamber also gives a good linear response to gamma fields over 4 decades under a pressure condition of 1 atm. The pressure dependence characteristics show that the ionization current is only sensitive at low pressures. The pressure influence becomes weaker as the pressure increases mainly due to the decrease in the mean free path of beta particles produced by tritium decay. The minimum detection limit of the chamber is 3.7x10(5) Bq/m(3).
authors.affiliation: Institute of Nuclear Physics and Chemistry, China Academy of Engineering Physics, Sichuan, Mianyang 621900, People's Republic of China. zhilinchan@gmail.com
authors.forename: Zhilin
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Ruiming
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.forename: Long
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Mu
authors.forename: Guoyang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Song
authors.forename: Heyi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Guanyin
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Xiye
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wei