Radiation hardness of mass produced PWO crystals

Studies of the distribution of the induced absorption in the spectral region of scintillation for mass produced PWO crystals and kinetics recovery have been made at the Bogoroditsk Techno-Chemical Plant using a specially developed rapid analysis method and at CERN with tests at various facilities, which are easy to compare with electron beam damage and easy to access in a close vicinity. A probability for crystals with poor radiation hardness to be installed into a calorimeter and a probability for crystals with good radiation hardness to be rejected during certification are estimated. It is shown that instead of measurements of the loss of light yield transmitted through PWO crystals under electron beam irradiation, it is possible to use a sampling based measurement method of radiation induced adsorption of crystals, i.e. to control the PWO crystal distribution by their radiation hardness.