Diamond detectors for alpha monitoring in corrosive media for nuclear waste activity monitoring

We report on the development of detection devices enabling the direct activity monitoring of liquid sources containing alpha emitters, with interests for nuclear waste process monitoring. The devices rely upon the use of a synthetic diamond active layer, used for detection, a material being totally inert and not affected by its direct contact with the corrosive media used here (concentrated HNO₃, typ. 1M). Those devices convincingly passed all preliminary tests as reported here and were produced at a very small scale for measurements in a reprocessing nuclear plant.