Precision measurement of radioactivity in gamma-rays spectrometry using two HPGe detectors (BEGe-6530 and GC0818-7600SL models) comparison techniques: Application to the soil measurement

Abstract

Graphical abstract

Elemental quantification and radioactive characterization of soil from Douala Bassa area: littoral region of Cameroon using X- and γ-rays spectrometry

“…Soils from the study area vary from yellow through brown to black ferralitic soils (Asaah Victor et al 2006). The details of the description of the study area are presented in research done by Guembou et al (2017bGuembou et al ( , 2016. It is a part of the largest city of Cameroon and Central Africa where the average annual temperature fluctuated around the value of 27.0°C (80.6°F).…”

“…Composites of 18 soil samples were randomly sampled from the 02 campuses, 07 from Campus 1 named ESSEC situated at Ange-Raphael and 11 from Campus 2 located at Ndong-Bong (Douala-Bassa area). For details concerning sampling method, the previously published research done by Guembou et al described the methodology used in the present research (Guembou et al 2017a, Guembou et al 2017b, Guembou et al 2016. The samples were labeled accordingly and transferred to the laboratory for specific preparation and analysis.…”

“…Samples were dried at 60°C for 48 h once in the lab, ground and sieved to achieve homogeneous content with a grain size less than 100 μm for XRF measurement. It was also dried at around 105°C for 24 h in a special oven, a tool for gamma spectrometry, ground and sieved for grain size less than 250 μm for gamma spectrometry preparation (Guembou et al 2016). The sampling procedure is presented in Figure 2.…”

“…Radiometric measurements were performed following the procedure of counting individual photons characterized by energy emitted from different radionuclides present in the investigated samples. Two analysis using fairly similar methods of detectors' calibration were performed with HPGe BE6530 model (to assess activity of two radionuclides: 226 Ra and 232 Th with low photon energy) and with GC0818-7600SL model (to assess 40 K radioactivity level which gamma-ray line is around 1460 keV higher than 226 Ra and 232 Th gamma-ray lines) (Guembou et al 2016). The 295.2 and 351.9 keV of 214 Pb and 1120.3 keV of 214 Bi γ-ray emission were used to monitor the activity concentration of 226 Ra.…”

“…The sample analysis process was followed by the calculation of activity concentration in Bq/kg. Background subtraction was done on each sample' spectrum using Genie-2000 software v 3.2 and implemented algorithms accordingly (Genie 2000, Guembou et al 2016). This step included cascades summing correction as well as auto-absorption correction.…”