• Proceedings of the Korean Radioactive Waste Society Conference
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• 2004.06a
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• pp.43-51
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• 2004

In order to decommission the shielding concrete of KRR(Korea Research Reactor) -1＆2, it must be exactly determined activated level and range by neutron irradiation during operation. To determine the activated level and range, it must be sampled and analyzed the core sample. But, there are difficulties in sample preparation and determination of the measurement efficiency by self-absorption. In the study, the full energy efficiency of the HPGe detector was compared with the measured value using standard source and the calculated one using Monte Carlo simulation. Also. self-absorption effects due to the density and component change of the concrete were calculated using the Monte Carlo method. Its results will be used radioactivity analysis of the real concrete core sample in the future.

• Journal of Radiation Industry
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.155-166
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• 2024

In this study, a liquid scintillation spectrometer was developed for online continuous monitoring of tritium nuclides in water. The device consists of two photoelectron multiplier tubes (PMT), a simultaneous counting circuit, and a signal processing unit including a multi-channel analyzer (MCA). As a method to verify the performance of the equipment developed in this study, samples were prepared using a standard source, and the spectrum of tritium was measured to evaluate the detector characteristics such as efficiency, background (BKG), and minimum detectable activity (MDA). To evaluate the effect of pretreatment on tritium radioactivity measurement results, the MDA of water (seawater and groundwater) samples before and after pretreatment was calculated and compared. The results of the evaluation confirmed the satisfaction of the reference values of the Nuclear Safety Commission's "Discharge Control Standard in Drainage Water" and the World Health Organization's (WHO) "Tritium Radioactivity Concentration for Drinking Water Standards". The liquid scintillation spectrometer developed in this study, with or without pretreatment, confirmed detection performance equivalent to 1/100th of the discharge control standard for drainage water (40,000 Bq L^-1) and the WHO's drinking water standard for tritium radioactivity (10,000 Bq L^-1).

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.51-58
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• 2001

In the low level radioactivity measurement, such as environmental radioactivity, there were used commonly cylindrical and Marinelli type beakers by means of measurement container. If there are differences in the matrix density or sample height between standard source and sample, it must be determined full energy peak efficiency considering self absorption effect. In this paper, we compared measured efficiency with calculated full energy peak efficiencies in the HPGe detector using the Monte Carlo method. For cylindrical container, we calculated the variation of the efficiency with sample height. Also, we calculated the variation of the detection efficiency with apparent density in the cylindrical and Marinelli container. It was seen that it need to be corrected for self absorption in the energy range of below 1000keV. Also, in order to verify the validity of calculation, we compared the calculated value with reference value using NIST SRM 4353 reference soil.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.8-15
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• 1995

An estimate of a change in radioactivity's circumstances around the nuclear power plant is validated with the results of the radioactivity measurements are compared. In this study, to further enhance the reliability of the results obtained from the environmental radioactivity measurements and analysis around the nuclear power plants that have been carried out up to the present. In the korea standard, there is the technical analysis guide for general stable chemical element's, but there is not the technical analysis guide for the radionuclei. therefore the environmental sample collection, the pretreatment of the sample and radionuclide analysis in the sample, the result's of the environmental radioactivity measurements by each organization, etc. are different. It is not sufficient for the database to forecasting a change in radioactivity's circumstances. A comparative study of collection and pretreatment techniques for the soil sample, the results by comparison, the method of minimizing the relative error are proposed. At one side of sample collection, there are going to considered that the surroundings of sample collection like the lay of the land, the provision of the selection standard for the area and pathway of radionuclide adhesion, the coherence of sample collection, etc.. at another side of pretreatment of the sample and measurement in the case of soil sample, how to do homogeneously the soil particle size and the standard tools, i.e. kinds of meshes, must to be selected.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.1
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• pp.190-200
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• 2023

As the field of application of in-situ gamma spectroscopy is diversified, proficiency is required for consistent and accurate analysis. In this study, a program was developed to virtually create gamma energy spectra of artificial nuclides, which are difficult to obtain through actual measurements, for training. The virtual spectrum was created by synthesizing the spectra of the background radiation obtained through actual measurement and the theoretical spectra of the artificial radionuclides obtained by a Monte Carlo simulation. Since the theoretical spectrum can only be obtained for a given geometrical structure, representative major geometries for in-situ measurement (ground surface, concrete wall, radioactive waste drum) and the detectors (HPGe, NaI(Tl), LaBr₃(Ce)) were predetermined. Generated virtual spectra were verified in terms of validity and harmonization by gamma spectrometry and energy calibration. As a result, it was confirmed that the energy calibration results including the peaks of the measured spectrum and the peaks of the theoretical spectrum showed differences of less than 1 keV from the actual energies, and that the calculated radioactivity showed a difference within 20% from the actual inputted radioactivity. The verified data were assembled into a database and a program that can generate a virtual spectrum of desired condition was developed.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.85-96
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• 2018

Background: A variety of inorganic scintillators have been developed and improved for use in radiation detection and measurement, and in situ gamma-ray spectrometry in the environment remains an important area in nuclear safety. In order to verify the feasibility of promising scintillators in an actual environment, a performance test is necessary to identify gamma-ray peaks and calculate the radioactivity from their net count rates in peaks. Materials and Methods: Among commercially available scintillators, $LaBr_3(Ce)$ scintillators have so far shown the highest energy resolution when detecting and identifying gamma-rays. However, the intrinsic background of this scintillator type affects efficient application to the environment with a relatively low count rate. An algorithm to subtract the intrinsic background was consequently developed, and the in situ calibration factor at 1 m above ground level was calculated from Monte Carlo simulation in order to determine the radioactivity from the measured net count rate. Results and Discussion: The radioactivity of six natural radionuclides in the environment was evaluated from in situ gamma-ray spectrometry using an $LaBr_3(Ce)$ detector. The results were then compared with those of a portable high purity Ge (HPGe) detector with in situ object counting system (ISOCS) software at the same sites. In addition, the radioactive cesium in the ground of Jeju Island, South Korea, was determined with the same assumption of the source distribution between measurements using two detectors. Conclusion: Good agreement between both detectors was achieved in the in situ gamma-ray spectrometry of natural as well as artificial radionuclides in the ground. This means that an $LaBr_3(Ce)$ detector can produce reliable and stable results of radioactivity in the ground from the measured energy spectrum of incident gamma-rays at 1 m above the ground.

• Journal of Radiopharmaceuticals and Molecular Probes
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.95-101
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• 2022

Microfluidic radioimmunoassay (RIA) platform called µ-RIA spends less reagent and shorter reaction time for the analysis compared to the conventional tube-based radioimmunoassay. This study reported the design of µ-RIA chips optimized for the gamma counter which could measure the small samples of radioactive materials automatically. Compared with the previous study, the µ-RIA chips developed in this study were designed to be compatible with conventional RIA test tubes. And, the automatic gamma counter could detect radioactivity from the ¹²⁵I labeled anti-PSA attached to the chips. Effects of the multi-layer microchannels and two-phase flow in the µ-RIA chips were investigated in this study. The measured radioactivity from the ¹²⁵I labeled anti-PSA was linearly proportional to the number of stacked chips, representing that the radioactivity in µ-RIA platform could be amplified by designing the chips with multi-layers. In addition, we designed µ-RIA chip to generate liquid-gas plug flow inside the microfluidic channel. The plug flow can promote binding of the biomolecules onto the microfluidic channel surface with recirculation in the liquid phase. The ratio of liquid slug and air slug length was 1 : 1 when the ¹²⁵I labeled anti-PSA and the air were injected at 1 and 35 µL/min, respectively, exhibiting 1.6 times higher biomolecule attachment compared to the microfluidic chip without the air injection. This experimental result indicated that the biomolecular reaction was improved by generating liquid-gas slugs inside the microfluidic channel. In this study, we presented a novel µ-RIA chips that is compatible with the conventional gamma counter with automated sampler. Therefore, high-throughput radioimmunoassay can be carried out by the automatic measurement of radioactivity with reduced radiowaste generation. We expect the µ-RIA platform can successfully replace conventional tube-based radioimmunoassay in the future.

• Journal of Radiopharmaceuticals and Molecular Probes
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.22-25
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• 2018

Radiopharmaceuticals are used for diagnosis or therapy of diseases. According to the recent consensus nomenclature rules for radiopharmaceutical chemistry, specific activity is defined as the radioactivity per gram of radiolabeled compound and molar activity as the radioactivity per mole of radiolabeled compound. In this review, molar activity of radiopharmaceuticals is discussed in terms of its significance in nuclear imaging as well as its measurement methods.

• Journal of Radiation Industry
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.101-107
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• 2024

Rapid screening for internal contamination by alpha- and beta-emitting radionuclides is essential in situations involving radiation workers or radiation accidents. This study focused on the use of urine samples and liquid scintillation counting to quickly and accurately assess contamination. Calibration of the alpha and beta detection areas ensured precise measurement results. The major radionuclides recommended for surveillance during accidents were also considered. This study evaluated the effectiveness of the method by examining various parameters, including the limit of detection, linearity, sensitivity, selectivity, accuracy, ruggedness, and blind test sample analysis. The liquid scintillation counting method is an effective tool for screening urinary samples to detect alpha- and beta-emitting radionuclides, particularly during radiation emergencies, despite some limitations in precision.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.317-323
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• 2014

Odyssey, one of the NASA's Mars exploration program and SELENE (Kaguya), a Japanese lunar orbiting spacecraft have a payload of Gamma-Ray Spectrometer (GRS) for analyzing radioactive chemical elements of the atmosphere and the surface. In these days, gamma-ray spectroscopy with a High-Purity Germanium (HPGe) detector has been widely used for the activity measurements of natural radionuclides contained in the soil of the Earth. The energy spectra obtained by the HPGe detectors have been generally analyzed by means of the Window Analysis (WA) method. In this method, activity concentrations are determined by using the net counts of energy window around individual peaks. Meanwhile, an alternative method, the so-called Full Spectrum Analysis (FSA) method uses count numbers not only from full-absorption peaks but from the contributions of Compton scattering due to gamma-rays. Consequently, while it takes a substantial time to obtain a statistically significant result in the WA method, the FSA method requires a much shorter time to reach the same level of the statistical significance. This study shows the validation results of FSA method. We have compared the concentration of radioactivity of $^{40}K$, $^{232}Th$ and $^{238}U$ in the soil measured by the WA method and the FSA method, respectively. The gamma-ray spectrum of reference materials (RGU and RGTh, KCl) and soil samples were measured by the 120% HPGe detector with cosmic muon veto detector. According to the comparison result of activity concentrations between the FSA and the WA, we could conclude that FSA method is validated against the WA method. This study implies that the FSA method can be used in a harsh measurement environment, such as the gamma-ray measurement in the Moon, in which the level of statistical significance is usually required in a much shorter data acquisition time than the WA method.