Cosmic radiation measurements in airline service

Ionising radiation monitoring equipment is installed in all Concordes and much data have been derived. To validate the measurements from the on-board monitoring equipment, a programme of measurements on Concorde has been carried out using passive dosemeters in association with the UK National Radiological Protection Board. Data from a typical month (in this. case October 1997) shows an arithmetic mean dose across the British Airways Concorde fleet of 12.9 (+/-0.4) mu Sv.h(-1). Results from the NRPB measurements for the same month give a dose of 11.4 (+/-0.5) mu Sv.h(-1) and application of the CARI 3Q programme gives a dose of 9.6 mu Sv.h(-1) for the same month. The effective route dose between London and New York gives a mean value of 43.1 mu Sv for the Concorde detectors. The NRPB results give a route dose of 38.9 mu Sv whereas the CARI 3Q programme gives a route dose of 32.5 mu Sv. Measurements have also been performed on the Boeing 747-400 aircraft on the high latitude ultralonohaul direct London-Tokyo flight and these give values in the region of 6 mu Sv.h(-1), against the CARI 3Q estimate of 3.7 mu Sv.h(-1).