An anticoincidence-shielded gamma-ray spectrometer for analysis of low level environmental radionuclides

First tests of the active shield for a gamma ray spectrometer

“…The reduction of the continuum at low energies is pronounced (larger total number of coincidence events is rejected in the low-energy part of spectrum than in the high energy part, due to higher efficiency detection of Ge detector at lower energies). By comparison with Byun et al (2003) results, where the reduction below 200 keV is negligible, our setup has definite advantage at low energies.…”

“…Our system is very similar to the setup with a p-type detector described in Byun et al (2003). Unfortunately, in this article a lot of operational details are not reported thus the full comparison of the systems is not possible.…”

“…The main goal of these systems is to eliminate the (mainly cosmic muon induced) background without loss of events from the sample. Many researchers have described their active shield techniques (Hamajima and Komura, 2004b;Byun et al, 2003;Povinec et al, 2005;Pointurier et al, 1996), not mentioning the task of sample count losses and the timing set up. Moreover, for similar experimental configurations (Pointurier et al, 1996;Hurtado et al, 2006), very different background reduction factors (5 and 1.4, respectively) are reported.…”

Detection of minor and trace elements in powdered milk

“…Children in particular are susceptible to the effects of a trace element deficiency [1]. The determination of trace element levels in food-stuffs, especially milk [2], could play an important role in understanding a number of deficiency-related diseases.…”