Liquid scintillation applied to alpha counting of plutonium

✍ Scribed by Joseph Bubernak

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1993
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 457 KB
• Volume: 276
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0003-2670
• DOI: 10.1016/0003-2670(93)85057-q

✦ Synopsis

A liquid scintillation counter has been modified with fast electronic modules to extend its range for a-counting rate measurements. The practical upper limit for accurate counting is about 30 x lo6 cpm, at which 5% dead-time loss corrections are applied. Solutions of ugPu up to 200 g 1-l can be aliquoted directly with capillary pipets, thereby obviating the need for dilutions. The aliquots are mixed with 250 ~1 of cocktail in 400~~1 plastic centrifuge tubes for counting so that waste generation is minimized. Although the counting set-up includes no coincidence circuitry, blanks show less than 10 cpm. Therefore, low-activity samples can also be measured accurately.