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

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Civil Defense Museum

In July of 2001 I visited the Texas Department of Health RADEF shop.
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.


Shelves of metersThe 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.

CDV-794 calibration unitHere 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!!!!

 



CDV700 Calbration unitThis 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.