Thermal Annealing of Chemical Radiation Damage

Abstract

AT present the only observations on the thermal annealing of chemical radiation damage appear to be some measurements on potassium nitrate reported in 1955¹. These measurements did not include isothermal kinetic studies, nor do they appear to exclude some possible alternative explanations of the observations. We have made measurements on the isothermal annealing of radiolysed lead nitrate and subsidiary experiments which seem to exclude any alternative explanation of the results. The experiments were conducted on a sample of vacuum-dried lead nitrate crystals sieved to between 80 and 100 mesh. The crystals were irradiated to a dose of about 50 Mr. with 2 MeV. electrons from a Van de Graaff accelerator. A typical plot of the disappearance of the nitrite, produced by the irradiation, upon thermal annealing of the crystals is shown in Fig. 1.