The effect of uncertainties in nuclear decay data on coincidence summing calculations for gamma-ray spectrometry

All nuclear decay data have uncertainties. It is not obvious how these uncertainties affect the detection efficiencies in gamma-ray spectrometry performed with HPGe detectors and in close geometry with cascading gamma-rays. This paper presents examples based on Monte Carlo simulations. It shows that for certain cases the uncertainty in the detection efficiency can be significantly greater than the uncertainty of the nuclear decay. This should thus be taken into account when performing a complete uncertainty budget for close geometry measurements. (author)