Challenge: Cameras on a Nuclear Reactor

[Gavjenks]

The problem here is that you're asking how to take a picture of 'light' without the light actually hitting the camera. The only way I see this can be done is by discriminating the visible spectrum from the spectra you don't want (X-ray, gamma, etc.). A faraday cage can do this if the mesh is of the correct size, but I assume that by then you'd also be losing most of the visible light too. Could a special prism do it? I don't know what prisms do to very short wavelengths .... But again idea is that you'd have to discriminate visible from unwanted.

Gamma rays cannot be bent by any traditional means like prisms or lenses, due to how deeply penetrating they are. I.e., most of the rays would travel all the way through your prism without hitting any atoms on the way through, and thus would be unaffected by it. And in general, they're much more likely to get absorbed than to reflect or refract even when they do hit something.

And yes, you can stop gamma rays with "faraday cages" of lead, but visible light is going to always be stopped first. This is only an effective strategy if you want to see the gamme rays but NOT the visible ones.

 

[ClickAddict]

Hey rabbit, Just took a quick look, but would these do the trick. seems like they were designed specifiaclly for what you want.

R.O.V. Technologies Inc. - Cameras

 

[PixelRabbit]

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply all! I will go through the thread with Mr Rabbit when he gets home tonight and respond then, great info though!

 

[Heitz]

So fiber optics won't lead gamma radiation but will visible? At what wavelength does EM begin to escape fiber optic cables?

 

[Gavjenks]

So fiber optics won't lead gamma radiation but will visible? At what wavelength does EM begin to escape fiber optic cables?

It's a gradual thing. The higher the frequency, the greater the percentage of light that will escape at any given angle of incidence.

So it depends... on:
1) The difference of refractive index in your fiber optic cable vs. its outer coating (bigger difference = wider range of wavelengths captured in general)
2) How much you are bending your fiber optic cable. Shallower bends = more frequencies captured.
3) How long your cable is, or more accurately, how many bounces the light has to make internally to get to its destination, but the only real practical way to measure this is roughly based on length.

Gamma rays however will pretty much always escape no matter what, and visible (or whatever frequency your data laser is at for the fiber optic rig) rays will pretty much never escape (that's what the cables are designed for!).

The 3 points above are only really going to start mattering for frequencies in between, like UV and X-Rays. But I'm pretty sure that BY DEFINITION, any light produced by radioactive decay = gamma rays, and are well outside of the range of being captures by fiber optics for any distance.