Health physics : Wide area reference sources

These wide area tritium sources are designed for the calibration and routine checking of tritium surface contamination monitoring equipment.
Due to the extremely short range of Tritium (H-3) beta particles in air (approximately 4mm), the direct measurement of H-3 must be undertaken with great care.
Therefore it is important to check the correct function of the detector using a suitable H-3 source immediately prior to measurement.

These tritium sources are electrically conducting and do not suffer from the build up of electrostatic charge that can cause measurement problems. The thickness of the activated layer is approximately 3 microns. Tritium wide area reference sources are calibrated for β -emission only, not for activity.