Qualitative and quantitative analysis of beta emitters in aqueous solutions

A beta spectrometer, consisting of a liquid scintillation counter, coupled to a programmable multichannel analyser was used to achieve the objective of detecting and measuring beta activity in low level aqueous environmental solution as well as identifying the radioisotopes present. Aqueous solutions of standard beta emitters, covering a range of energies between 18.6 KeV and 3550 KeV, were used to develop computer methods for analysis. The effects of pH, acids, bases, buffers, and salts on the stability of the mixture and on the detection efficiency of the radioisotopes, were investigated. It was found that temperature changes, beyond the operating temperature range, could result in severe errors. Application of the Cherenkov counting technique for beta emitters, gives extra data to support the main results. For the analysis of environmental solutions, which may contain a variety of radioisotopes, the system was used to obtain spectra of alpha emitters, beta emitters with internal conversion and Cherenkov radiation. Synthetic mixtures of tritium and carbon-14 of activity ratios between 8:1 and 1:8 were used to investigate the problems of multielement spectral analysis. (author)