Comparison and Improvement of the Determinations of Actinide Low Activities Using Several α Liquid Scintillation Spectrometers

We applied three procedures using two α liquid scintillation spectrometers (PERALS and TRI-CARB) and two scintillation cocktails (Alphaex and Ultima Gold LLT) for the determination of α-emitter low activities. For each procedure, the limit of detection, the resolution, the separation factor, and the Fischer coefficient were determined in order to perform 232U−234U−238U isotopic measurements. The deconvolution usually performed is clean when the PERALS spectrometer is used. This is not possible for the TRI-CARB spectrometer using the Ultima Gold LLT scintillation cocktail. This problem was solved by combining the advantages of both techniques using the Alphaex scintillation cocktail in the TRI-CARB spectrometer. Under these conditions, the limit of detection was improved, the resolution decreased from 500−800 to 420−590 keV, and the separation factor increased from 0.9 to 1.1−1.2. This third procedure was applied with success for 232U−234U−238U isotopic experiments.