Simultaneous determination of beta nuclides by liquid scintillation spectrometry

The determination of radionuclides in environmental samples is of importance, because a large amount of hazardous radionuclides have been released into the biosphere and spread over large areas by weapon tests, releases from nuclear power plants or nuclear fuel reprocessing facilities. Many nuclides are radiotoxic even in small concentrations. Therefore, it is necessary to determine these nuclides at low levels. The usual way to analyze samples of several nuclides involves time-consuming chemical separations followed by activity measurement of the isolated nuclides. An alternative method is the simultaneous measurement of the nuclides by recording and analyzing the liquid scintillation spectra.
The nuclides ³H, ¹⁴C, ⁵⁵Fe, ⁶⁰Co, ⁹⁰Sr, ⁹⁹Tc, ¹³⁷Cs were measured in various combinations of mixtures as well as with the TRICARB 3000 and Wallac1414a/b (both devices from PerkinElmer).
The TRICARB 3000 was used to measure up to three nuclides in one sample with the assay type dpm (triple) with a good accuracy even for large activity differences and beta energies close together. It is necessary to generate quench curves for each nuclide.
The multi nuclide spectra measured in the cpm mode in the Wallac1414 were deconvoluted with the knowledge of the shape of the single nuclide spectra [1]. In this case has to be considered the difference between the measured and fitted counts (cpm) and the real activity (dpm) subsequentlyThe spectra deconvolution allows to determine more than three nuclides in one sample but with a lower accuracy.
[1] C. Nebelung et al. 2007 Appl. Radiat. Isot. 65, 209-217