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In situ gamma spectrometry using high-purity germanium (HPGe) detectors is a frequently used method for the determination of radionuclide ground deposition levels. Such measurements do, however, require an efficiency calibration based on detector sensitivity and parameters such as soil density and vertical activity distribution. In this work, a novel expression is used for the detector efficiency, incorporating both the influence of photon energy and incidence angle. Detector-specific efficiency data are determined empirically. For the theoretical calculation of the photon fluence at the detector, a three-layer model of finite thickness is developed for the description of soil density and vertical activity distribution. In order to facilitate the calibration of in situ measurements, a PC program has been developed to enable rapid, on-site calculations of radionuclide ground deposition levels. The semi empirical calibration method was tested on in situ measurements with two different detectors, and the results show good agreement with results obtained from traditional soil sampling.

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Semi-empirical methods are often used for efficiency calibrations of in situ gamma-ray spectrometry measurements with high-purity germanium detectors. The intrinsic detector efficiency is experimentally determined for different photon energies and angles of incidence, and a suitable expression for the efficiency is fitted to empirical data. In this work, the combined standard uncertainty of such an efficiency function for two detectors was assessed. The uncertainties in individual efficiency measurements were found to be about 1.9 and 3.1% (with a coverage factor k = 1, i.e. with a confidence interval of about 68%) for the two detectors. The main contributions to these uncertainties were found to originate from uncertainties in source-to-detector distance, source activity and full-energy peak count rate. The standard uncertainties of the fitted functions were found to be somewhat higher than the uncertainty of individual data points, i.e. 5.2 and 8.1% (k = 1). With the introduction of a new expression for the detector efficiency, these uncertainties were reduced to 3.7 and 4.2%, i.e. with up to a factor of two. Note that this work only addresses the uncertainty in the determination of intrinsic detector efficiency.