Radiation Counting Characteristics on Surface-Modified Polyethylene Naphthalate Scintillators

For decontamination in Fukushima evacuated areas, a considerable number of low-cost, efficient radiation detectors such as survey meters will be needed in the coming years. We developed a polyethylene naphthalate based scintillator (®SCINTIREX) recently. It is a plastic scintillator that emits sufficient fluorescent light upon exposure to radiation without the need for wavelength shifting, thus reducing costs of the survey meters. We tested the performance using the OKEN survey meter with a 1mm thick polyethylene naphthalate sheet, and found that the count rate for a 36Cl source and a 60Co source can be more than doubled when the plastic surface is modified to allow more light to reach the photo detector.