engleski

Determination of gamma-ray self-attenuation correction in environmental samples by combining transmission measurements and Monte Carlo simulations

We develop a simple and widely applicable method for determining the self-attenuation correction in gamma-ray spectrometry on environmental samples. The method relies on measurements of the transmission of photons over the matrices of a calibration standard and an analysed sample. Results of this experiment are used in subsequent Monte Carlo simulations in which we first determine the linear attenuation coefficients () of the two matrices and then the self-attenuation correction for the analysed sample. The method is validated by reproducing, over a wide energy range, the literature data for the  of water. We demonstrate the use of the method on a sample of sand, for which we find that the correction is considerable below ~400 keV, where many naturally occurring radionuclides emit gamma rays. At the lowest inspected energy (~60 keV), one measures an activity that is by a factor of ~1.8 smaller than its true value.

gamma-ray spectrometry ; self-attenuation correction ; Monte Carlo simulation ; linear attenuation coefficient

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