ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses instruments and dosimeters used in the environment of particle accelerators to measure and characterize the radiation fields. It focuses on instrumentation that addresses those aspects of accelerator radiation fields that pose special problems perhaps somewhat unique to this branch of radiation protection. Many of the detection techniques employed to measure radiation fields are dependent on the counting of individual events such as the passage of charged particles through some medium or the decay of some particle or radionuclide. The dynamic range of quantities to be measured encountered at accelerators can extend from fractional µSv yr-1 encountered in environmental monitoring to large values of absorbed dose of up to megagray that can be of concern for radiation damage. Certain accelerators such as linear accelerators, rapid cycle synchrotrons, and “single-turn” extracted beams from synchrotrons can have very low average intensities but extremely high instantaneous rates.
