Operational comparison of bubble (super heated drop) dosimetry results with routine albedo thermoluminescent dosimetry for a selected group of Pu-238 workers at Los Alamos National Laboratory

This paper is an operational study that compares the use of albedo thermoluminescent dosimeters with bubble dosimeters to determine whether bubble dosimeters do provide a useful daily ALARA tool that can yield measurements close to the dose-of-record. A group of workers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) working on the Radioactive Thermoelectric Generators (RTG) for the NASA Cassini space mission wore both bubble dosimeters and albedo dosimeters over a period from 1993 through 1996. The bubble dosimeters were issued and read on a daily basis and the data were used as an ALARA tool. The personnel albedo dosimeter was processed on monthly basis and used as the dose-of-record. The results of this study indicated that cumulative bubble dosimetry results agreed with whole-body albedo dosimetry results within about 37% on average. However it was observed that there is a significant variability of the results on an individual basis both month-to-month and from one individual to another