title: Uncertainties of Mayak urine data.
abstract: A method of parameterising the likelihood functions representing the uncertainty of Mayak plutonium urine bioassay measurements is described. The Poisson-lognormal model is assumed and data from 63 cases (1,087 urine measurements in all) are used to empirically determine the lognormal normalisation uncertainty, given the measurement uncertainties obtained from count quantities. An outlier-insensitive procedure is used to fit the cumulative probability distribution of scaled deviations in order to determine the normalisation uncertainty. The natural logarithm of the geometric standard deviation of the total normalisation uncertainty is found to be 0.34 including a measurement component estimated to be 0.2.
authors.affiliation: Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA. guthrie@lanl.gov
authors.forename: Guthrie
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Miller
authors.forename: Vadim
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Vostrotin
authors.forename: Vladimir
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Vvedensky