Methods for Measuring Daughter Products of Radon Decay in the Surface Atmospheric Layer of the Earth

   At present, an actual problem is the study of temporal variations of various nuclear radiation from the lithosphere in foothill and desert landscapes. This refers to the fluxes of neutrons, gamma quanta, beta particles and emanations of heavy chemical elements. The problem of studying such distributions in the surface atmospheric layer of the Earth remains relevant, due to the fact that they are concentrated in the human environment and have a direct impact on the health of the population. This work is devoted to the study of beta-spectra of the natural radiation background in the surface atmospheric layer of the Earth. The origin of the measured beta spectra is associated with the daughter products of the decay of radon isotopes Rn-219, Rn-220, Rn-222 in three natural radioactive series. The spectra were measured from October 2018 to October 2019 in the foothills of the Zailiysky Alatau Tien Shan in Almaty. The frequency of measurements averaged about 10 measurements per day with an exposure of at least 2000 s. A database of daily, seasonal and annual variations in beta spectra has been accumulated. For the analysis of the data obtained, a special software “Analyzer of the Beta Spectra Array” was developed, which made it possible to process the standard output files of the “Sputnik” spectrometric installation and to integrate each spectrum in a given time interval. Time variation over the measured period was described using a standard mathematical computer package for wavelet analysis. The wavelet spectra obtained as a result of integration are used to identify daily, seasonal, and annual effects in variations of beta emanations. Along with this, similar mathematical processing was carried out to predict the impact of external factors in temporal variations of beta particles.

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