Determination of soil, sand and ore primordial radionuclide concentrations by full-spectrum analyses of high-purity germanium detector spectra.
The full-spectrum analysis (FSA) method was used to determine primordial activity concentrations (ACs) in soil, sand and ore samples, in conjunction with a HPGe detector. FSA involves the least-squares fitting of sample spectra by linear combinations of (238)U, (232)Th and (40)K standard spectra. The differences between the FSA results and those from traditional windows analyses (using regions-of-interest around selected photopeaks) are less than 10% for all samples except zircon ore, where FSA yielded an unphysical (40)K AC.
Newman
R T
RT
Environmental Radioactivity Laboratory, Physics Group, iThemba LABS, Somerset West 7129, South Africa. newman@tlabs.ac.za
Lindsay
R
R
Maphoto
K P
KP
Mlwilo
N A
NA
Mohanty
A K
AK
Roux
D G
DG
de Meijer
R J
RJ
Hlatshwayo
I N
IN