The Brazilian National Intercomparison Program (PNI/IRD/CNEN): evaluation of 15 years of data.
The Instituto de Radioproteção e Dosimetria has been coordinating the National Intercomparison Program (PNI) for 15 years, from 1991 to 2005. The objective is to evaluate the analytical performance of the laboratories in low-level activity concentration radionuclide assays in environmental samples. This work presents an evaluation of PNI data from 42 intercomparison runs, which distributed to 22 Brazilian laboratories 2511 samples evaluating 5768 radionuclide assays involving 32 radionuclides in the period from 1991 to 2004. The laboratory performance was evaluated using the Normalized Standard Deviation used by the U.S. EPA. For comparison aims, the Normalized Deviation, used by BIPM was also applied. Laboratory performance were grouped and evaluated in three periods of 5 years each. The first period shows, an average value of good performance of 71.2%, the second shows an average of 78.6% and the last an average of 82.3%. Performance for each kind of radionuclide is also presented.
Tauhata
Luiz
L
Instituto de Radioproteção e Dosimetria/Comissão Nacional de Energia Nuclear, Avenida Salvador Allende, s/n Recreio dos Bandeirantes, CEP 22780-160, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. tauhata@ird.gov.br
Vianna
Maria Elizabeth Couto M
ME
de Oliveira
Antonio Eduardo
AE
Ferreira
Ana Cristina
AC
Bragança
Maura Julia C
MJ
Clain
Almir Faria
AF
de Faria
Rute Quelvia
RQ
D001938:Brazil; D011834:Radiation Monitoring; D011847:Radioactive Fallout; D011848:Radioactive Pollutants / Q000032:analysis*; D011868:Radioisotopes / Q000032:analysis*; D011874:Radiometry / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards; D013997:Time Factors
D011847:Radioactive Fallout; D011848:Radioactive Pollutants; D011868:Radioisotopes