Monitoring performance of the cameras under the high dose-rate gamma ray environments.

CCD/CMOS cameras, loaded on a robot system, are generally used as the eye of the robot and monitoring unit. A major problem that arises when dealing with images provided by CCD/CMOS cameras under severe accident situations of a nuclear power plant is the presence of speckles owing to the high dose-rate gamma irradiation fields. To use a CCD/CMOS camera as a monitoring unit in a high radiation area, the legibility of the camera image in such intense gamma-radiation fields should therefore be defined. In this paper, the authors describe the monitoring index as a figure of merit of the camera's legibleness under a high dose-rate gamma ray irradiation environment. From a low dose-rate (10 Gy h) to a high dose-rate (200 Gy h) level, the legible performances of the cameras owing to the speckles are evaluated. The numbers of speckles generated by gamma ray irradiation in the camera image are calculated by an image processing technique. The legibility of the sensor indicator (thermo/hygrometer) owing to the number of speckles is also presented.