A Monte Carlo approach in quality assurance of gamma spectrometric measurements of marine samples

Experience has demonstrated that data reliability in environmental radioactivity assessments is best achieved by a well designed quality assurance programme. A special attention has been devoted to gamma-spectrometric measurements of marine samples. Detector calibration, matrix corrections and coincidence corrections for large volume semiconductor detectors were carefully considered by means of realistic Monte Carlo simulations. The ISO-IUPAC recommendations for uncertainty estimation were followed in order to have a correct estimate of the uncertainty budget for each radionuclide analysis. (author)