Development of a HPGe shielding system for radioactivity measurements at Cheongpyeong Underground Radiation Laboratory

We constructed an underground laboratory called Cheongpyeong Underground Radiation Laboratory (CURL) for measuring the radioactivity levels of various samples by using HPGe detectors. CURL is located underground at a depth of 1000-m water equivalent in the Cheongpyeong Pumped Storage Power Plant. We developed a shielding system, which consists of 15-cm-thick Pb blocks and 5-cm-thick Cu blocks and completely surrounds a 100% HPGe detector. We measured the background radiations and the gamma peaks from sources with and without the shield. The shielding efficiencies were also estimated using MCNP5 simulations, and they were compared to our measured data. The shielding system blocked more than 99.99% of gamma rays with energies up to 3.0 MeV. The HPGe detector with the shielding system at CURL blocked both high-energy cosmic rays and background radiation from surrounding rocks and materials. Our CURL detector system was optimized for gamma-ray measurements of meterials with ultra-low radioactivity.