Wireless underwater SiPM-based gamma spectroscopy for real-time marine radioactivity monitoring

Abstract

Marine radioactivity monitoring is getting important to relieve public anxiety and to take immediate action for unexpected nuclear accidents. Currently, real-time marine radioactivity monitoring is conducted using gamma detectors (e.g. NaI(Tl) coupled with PMT) installed at specific sites in coastal area. However, there are several limitations in current site-specific gamma monitoring systems. First, gamma-ray loses most of its energy within water environment, so with the sitespecific system, it is hard to identify contaminated area. Also, ocean environment has difficulties in supplying stable power and data communication. Hence, most of gamma monitoring systems are installed in coastal area or on ship to have stable power supply and wired data communication or LTE-based wireless communication. Hence, we come up with necessities mobile batterypowered gamma spectrometry system that can conduct active marine radioactivity monitoring. We developed SiPM-based gamma spectroscopy with wireless data communication. The suggested mobile gamma spectroscopy can be used as stand-alone or combined with unmanned vehicles to conduct real-time active radiation monitoring and identify contaminated area. The developed system was tested in underwater and real-sea environment to evaluate its performance.