Texas Dept. of Health RADEF Shop Radiation Kits Main Radiation Kits CD V-777 Kit CD V-777A Kit CD V-777-1 Kit CD V-777-2 Kit CD V-777-4 Kit CD V-755 High School Kit Other Sets CD V-781 Aerial Monitoring Set CD V-757 Barrier Demonstration Set CD V-457 Class Demo Set Radiation Instruments CD V-700 CD V-700 Specials CD V-710 CD V-711 CD V-715 CD V-717 CD V-720 CD V-750 and Dosimeters Back to Shelter Supplies Main Back to Civil Defense Museum Main |
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The Texas Department of Health Radiological Emergency Preparedness Program still maintains a small inventory of Civil Defense radiation instruments for emergency use. Here are some photos from my trip. The
TDH-RADEF shop was located in a strip shopping center in Austin Texas.
This shop consisted of an office for the small staff and warehouse space
to store the instruments. Here you can see shelves of CDV-700s and CDV-715s
ready for calibration. The CDV-794 high-range calibration unit at the
left in the picture. The shop changed location shortly after this visit.
Here
is the CDV-794 high-range calibration unit. This unit has a 130 curie
Cesium-137 source inside of it. The unit is heavily shielded. They use
a pallet jack to move it around. This thing must weigh a ton! This is
used for calibration of the high-range survey meters. The meter goes into
the opening at the right of the unit. The door slides closed over the
opening to shield the operator. Like a dope, I didn't even think about
taking a picture of the unit with the door closed so the controls aren't
visible in this picture.Without thinking first, I asked one of the shop technicians if he had ever seen the source out of this unit. He replied "the only way I would ever want to see that source is through a pair of binoculars from far away." I said "Oh yeah, I guess it is pretty hot isn't it." Duhhh. This unit is capable of exposing the meter that is being calibrated to a 390 Roentgen Per Hour dose of gamma radiation. OUCH!!!!
This
is the unit that is used to calibrate the CDV-700. They have mounted a lead
containter into a small roll around table. There is a Cesium source inside
the lead container. The probe of the CDV-700 goes into a clip in the frame
above the container. There are 3 sliding attenuators that move into the
path of the radiation coming out of the top of the lead container. The various
ranges of the meter are calibrated by moving each shield out of the way
as needed to check each range of the meter. I watched the technician calibrate
a 700 while I was there. He first checked the geiger tube voltage after
the meter warmed up for a few minutes. He then set the geiger tube voltage
and calibrated the meter. He set the calibration adjustment and then checked
the meter in all of it's ranges. |