Estimation of ¹³⁴Cs concentration in soil samples using NaI(Tl) Spectrometer

Gamma-ray spectrometry is one of the powerful ways to determine the radioactivity in environmental samples. The gamma-ray spectrum is characterized by prominent Compton continuum from high energy gamma peaks of natural radionuclides to lower energy region. The major advantage in using NaI(Tl) detector is its high efficiency but, the evaluation of the components of composite spectrum is complicated owing to the inherent poor resolution. This compton continuum and background can obscure peaks of interest. The determination of ¹³⁴Cs concentration thus faces the problems of the natural background subtraction since the 605keV and 796keV peaks of ¹³⁴Cs overlaps with background peak at 609 keV (²¹⁴Bi) and 796keV (²²⁸Ac) respectively along with compton contribution from high energy background peaks. Also ¹³⁴Cs emits 801.9keV(8.7%) gamma, which overlap with 796 keV peak. However, spectrum stripping technique can used to resolve this issue. Paper presents the estimation of ¹³⁴Cs concentration in soil samples in presence of background from natural radionuclides using NaI(Tl) detector