Ion chamber monitors for pulsed X-ray background at electron accelerator facilities

Ion chambers sensitive to pulsed X-rays have been developed with special electrode configuration of four electrodes to suit the area-monitoring requirements at the electron accelerators. For comparison, a chamber with similar sensitive volume and overall dimensions was developed with a standard electrode configuration. The standard chamber can measure gamma radiation from 100 μR/h to 1 R/h range whereas the four-electrode chamber can measure gamma radiation from 100 μR/h to 1 kR/h with ±10% signal linearity thus enhancing three decades of measuring range. The chambers have been tested in pulsed X-ray background at the INDUS-I facility at R.R. Centre for Advanced Technology, Indore, under normal as well as beam loss conditions and the four-electrode chamber shows superior performance compared to a standard chamber. The experimental results obtained compared well with the theoretically estimated values.