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Jerry Busenitz

Publications and source records attributed to Jerry Busenitz.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

Radon Emanation from Dust of Varying Composition and Size

$^{222}Rn$ emanating from environmental dust constitutes an important background component for many low-energy, low-rate experiments. Radon emanation rates from dust and rock, thus, are important for experiment planning. In this paper, we report measured radon emanation fractions for five types of dry dust differing in grain size and composition. These data were obtained by a novel technique in $\gamma$-spectroscopy, measuring emanated and non-emanated $^{222}Rn$ progeny activities as well as the the parent $^{226}$Ra activity in a time series. The range of observed radon emanation fractions is $(3.7 \pm 2.0)\%$ to $(16.2 \pm 0.9)\%$. Four of the five samples are standardized samples available commercially, so additional investigations of these samples may be readily carried out.

physics.ins-det

A New Method for Evaluating the Effectiveness of Plastic Packaging Against Radon Penetration

Deposition of $^{222}Rn$ daughters onto detector materials pose a risk to ultra-low background experiments. To mitigate this risk, a common approach is to enclose detector components in sealed plastic bags made of films known to be effective barriers against radon. We describe a new method to evaluate radon barriers which is unique in that (a) it gauges not only the intrinsic resistance to radon penetration of a plastic film but also the integrity of bags fabricated from the film and sealed following some protocol, and (b) it employs gamma spectroscopy rather than alpha spectroscopy. We report the results of applying this method to sealed bags fabricated from polypropylene, Nylon, Mylar, metallized Mylar, FEP, and PFA. Evaluation of the fluoropolymers FEP and PFA as radon barriers are the first such measurements.

physics.ins-det