THERMAL AND SCATTER EFFECTS ON THE RADIATION SENSITIVITY OF WELL CHAMBERS USED FOR HIGH-DOSE RATE IR-192 CALIBRATIONS

High dose rate (HDR) iridium sources must be calibrated regularly because of the short half-life of Ir-192. High dose rate sources can now be calibrated using a new well-type chamber that allows easy, reproducible source calibrations. The chamber includes a styrofoam insulator that surrounds the source in the well. A study of the radiation sensitivity of the well chamber exposed to an HDR Ir-192 source at two different activities (300 and 230 GBq) revealed that the sensitivity of the chamber varies by as much as 1.1% as the chamber is moved toward a scattering surface. Second, with the styrofoam insulator removed, the air temperature within the ion collecting volume increased during exposure, causing a gradual decrease in chamber sensitivity of 0.15 % in 30 min. This temperature increase was caused by heat transfer from radiation emitted by the Ir-192 source, and diminished as the source decayed. However, with the styrofoam insulator around the central aluminum tube in the well, the source cannot heat the collecting volume and thus thermal equilibrium between the ion collecting volume and its environment is maintained throughout an exposure. The radiation sensitivity of the commercial well chamber was found to be constant for exposure times of 30 min.