Aslam.Ibrahim/Sandbox

CNSC laboratory achieves a milestone in ISO accreditation

Accreditation for gamma calibration services achieved, more to come

Written by: Aslam Ibrahim

On November 16, 2016, the CNSC laboratory was granted accreditation to ISO/IEC 17025:2005, a standard used throughout the world to evaluate testing and calibration laboratories. The accreditation scope includes the calibration of working measurement standards, gamma survey meters, and personal electronic dosimeters – in short, a significant part of the CNSC laboratory’s calibration services.

Accreditation was granted by the Standards Council of Canada (SCC), under the Program for the Accreditation of Laboratories – Canada (PALCAN) and the National Research Council of Canada Calibration Laboratory Assessment Service (NRC CLAS).

It is notable that the CNSC laboratory is the first of its kind in Canada that the SCC has accredited for calibration of working measurement standards and survey instruments for gamma measurement.

For the purposes of this article, the term “working measurement standard” refers to a measuring instrument that is calibrated relative to a reference measurement standard (which is also a measuring instrument). The working and reference measurement standards each consist of an ion chamber and an electrometer that are combined as a single measurement system.