Radiation Protection Glossary

A radiation protection glossary for Radiation Protection Supervisors (RPS), Radiation Protection Advisers (RPA) and anyone else interesting in radiation safety terms and definitions. The glossary is a mixture of health physics , phrases related to radiation protection legislation, transport, practical safety, technical terms and similar.

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For formal advice, see our Radiation Protection Adviser pages. 

Line Source

With respect to Ionising Radiation, a line source describes a Radioactive source which can be represented by a line between points A-B in any chosen plane. Calculations of Dose Rates from line sources are more complicated than those from Point Sources and in many cases, direct measurements are going to always be preferable. Such calculations usually involve knowing (or estimating) the Activity per unit length of the source, then calculating the dose rate at a chosen point by integrating contributions from integral points along the line. Commercial programs such as Microshield can undertake this process automatically.

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life

– Charles Darwin -