Influence of ambient temperature on gamma scintillation detector readings

Scintillation detectors, which are widely used in environmental field study for measurement of radiation dose, are devices that experience wide range of temperature changes when in use. One of the characteristic of scintillation detectors are that, they are very sensitive to change in temperature and hence, every scintillation detector have temperature stabilization inside them. The temperature-dependence coefficient which is part of the detector calculation is the simplest stabilization method that is used. In this work, the BDKG-03 scintillation detector which is used to measure gamma radiation was operated under a controlled condition using a climatic chamber. The BDKG-03 scintillation detector has a temperature stabilizing built-in algorithm. The dose rate and count rate of the gamma background radiation for different temperatures ranging from -40 – +40 ^{\circ}C in increment of 10 ^{\circ}C were measured and studied. The main aim of this work was to study the effect of different ranges of temperature for subsequent calculation of temperature correction coefficient. An analytical result from the experimental result shows that dose rate measurement using the built-in algorithm gives a precise reading as temperature increases. The temperature correction coefficient was found based on dependence.