Study of safety performance of the 241Am fire alarm source

The safety performance of ~(241)Am fire alarm sources made by using powder metallurgical technology has been preliminarily studied, so as to determine an allowable maximum energy limit value of the alpha particles outgoing from this kind of sources in light of radiation safety and the present technology. The yielded results show that ~(241)Am leak has not been found when the peak energy of the alpha energy spectrum of this kind of sources is less than 4.96 MeV.