ABSTRACT
The Secondary Standard Dosimetry Laboratory at the Ruder Boskovic Institute (SSDL), Zagreb, Croatia, was set up over the last few years with a strong support by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) through the Technical Cooperation Project CRO/1/004, Establishing Calibration Services. The SSDL occupies two calibration rooms, each 9.6 m long and 6 m wide and each with proper air conditioning. Their walls are concrete and 1 m thick, and the entrance doors are plated with lead to protect the control rooms and the surroundings against radiation. In the first calibration room in the basement, there are two sealed sources which share the same, 6 m long calibration bench. A 30 TBq 60Co source on one side of the bench is used for calibrating ionising chambers and other high-dose radiation equipment. The irradiation unit on the other side of the bench combines two sealed sources, that is, a 740 MBq 137Cs source and a 185 MBq 60Co source, and is used for radiation protection purposes. It has three attenuators with nominal attenuations of x10, x100, and x1000. The second calibration room, which is just above the first, accommodates an X-ray unit (ISOVOLT 420, 40 kV to 300 kV, 1 mA to 20 mA) with a 5 m long calibration bench, aperture wheel assembly designed to modify the X-ray beam diameter to meet various configuration requirements for calibration instruments, a set of filter assemblies to control beam definition according to ISO 4037-3, and a half-value layer kit.
