Estimating the Depth of Buried Radioactive Sources using Ground Penetrating Radar and a Gamma Ray Detector

Abstract

This study reports on nonintrusive depth estimation of a buried caesium-137 radioactive source using a ground penetrating radar (GPR) and a gamma ray detector. Specifically, the bulk density estimates from the GPR was used to fit a gamma ray attenuation model to the data from the detector. The depth of the source was successfully estimated when buried up to 18 cm in sand, gravel and soil. This will help in nonintrusive monitoring of nuclear contaminated sites.