Correlation Between Underground Radon Gas and Dormant Geological Faults

This work studies the concentration of radon in soil around a fault in the East Franklin Mountains in the El Paso area in West Texas. It is found that the in-soil production of radon is correlated to the existence of a fault even if it has not had any recorded activity in recent geological times. This adds to previous observations that link the production of radon to seismic activity, and seems to indicate that in non-active faults the radon production is due mainly to the radioactivity of the top soil and to the transport properties of the medium and not to deeper seismic activity. These results open the possibility of using in-soil radon gas concentrations as an examination tool of dormant faults

PADC Detected External Neutron Field by Nuclear Tracks at RFX-mod

Measured neutron signals relevant for plasma diagnostics on Reversed Field pinch eXperiment, RFX-mod, are obtained by nuclear track methodology with PADC-NtD’s. this technique provides the external neutron field values around the RFX-mod installation during pulsed operation. Charged particles from (n, p) and (n, α) reactions are related to formed latent tracks. these are etched in a thermoregulated water bath with a 6.25M, KOh solution at 60oC. Observed tracks were analyzed to determine track density from which neutron fluence spatial values should be derived. Results indicate that the neutron density in the surrounding environment change at most 40%. the epithermal component is 60% higher than that corresponding to the thermal region. the estimated neutron fluence for the whole experiment is 7.5×1010 neutrons cm2/s

CsI(Tl) scintillators as gamma-ray detectors for the identification of hidden explosives

We report on the performances of CsI(Tl) crystals as gamma-ray detectors, compared with standard NaI(Tl). Energy resolution from E_gamma = 122 keV up to E_gamma = 7.6 MeV and light output yield of different CsI(Tl) crystals and read-out configurations (photomultiplier tubes, photodiodes and avalanche photodiodes) have been measured.Published234-2387A. Geofisica per il monitoraggio ambientale e geologia medicaJCR Journa