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Potassium-40 (40K) is a background in many rare-event searches and may well play a role in interpreting results from the DAMA dark-matter search. The electron-capture decay of 40K to the ground state of 40 Ar has never been measured and contributes an unknown amount of background. The KDK (potassium decay) collaboration will measure this branching ratio using a 40K source, an X-ray detector, and the Modular Total Absorption Spectrometer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

A large volume scintillator detector has been used to measure the terrestrial stopping muon rate under different conditions of location, altitude, shielding and weather to determine the range of variation of the low energy muon flux. About 1 year of data has been collected under different conditions. This data can then be used to compare with cosmic ray muon simulations and to estimate the soft error rate due to direct ionization of muons.

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