Health Physics Research at the Idaho Accelerator Center

Dr. Doug Wells
Idaho State University
Director, Idaho Accelerator Center

Accelerator-based research imposes and creates health physics challenges that are generally not seen with radioactive sources or nuclear reactors.  Among these are higher energy radiation, enormous temporal variations in dose rate, and highly anisotropic radiation.  These challenges have led to many past and present health physics research projects at the Idaho Accelerator.  These include radiation-safety studies for "field operation" of accelerators, radiation monitoring and dosimetry in pulsed environments, dose delivery and control for radiobiology experiments, and hazardous and radioactive waste assay.  Examples from each of these categories will be presented.