An innovative technique in scanning land areas with a multi-FIDLER system

Remediation can be a long and tedious effort. One possible step in this process is the scanning of land to locate elevated areas of radiological contamination. By adapting existing global positioning technology with radiation detection systems, this process can be significantly accelerated. The Field Instrument for Detecting Low Energy Radiation (FIDLER) was used in conjunction with a Global Positioning System (GPS) and Trimble data logger. With this system two different land areas were scanned using two different scanning methods. In the first method, three FIDLERs were attached to a baby jogger and were used to scan a 20-acre site devoid of vegetation. The second technique involved individuals carrying the instruments over a 15-acre site that contained vegetation. Here the FIDLERs were waved in front of the workers in 50-cm arcs. In all cases, radiological and position data were collected by the data loggers. Using these results, accurate maps were generated for each site clearly illustrating areas and spots of elevated activity. By employing this technique over 250,000 data points pertaining to position and count rate were used to map nearly 40 acres of land in under 3 wk.