Optimization of an underwater in-situ LaBr3:Ce spectrometer with energy self-calibration and efficiency calibration

Abstract

An underwater in situ gamma ray spectrometer based on LaBr3 was developed and optimized to monitor marine radioactivity. The intrinsic background mainly from La138 and Ac227 of LaBr3 was well determined by low background measurement and pulse shape discrimination method. A method of self-calibration using three internal contaminant peaks was proposed to eliminate the peak shift during long term monitoring. With experiments under different temperatures, the method was proved to be helpful for maintaining long term stability. To monitor the marine radioactivity, the spectrometer efficiency was calculated via water tank experiment as well as Monte Carlo simulation.