An Investigation Into the Uncertainty from Non-uniform Distributions of Radioactivity - Sampling Uncertainty Versus In-toto Gamma Spectroscopy Efficiency Uncertainty

摘要

In all cases examined, the sampling uncertainty was larger than the in-toto gamma measurement uncertainty -typically about an order of magnitude larger. This means that in-toto measurements are likely better for situations where the activity is not homogeneous, and where gamma spectroscopy is appropriate. If sampling is to be done, then the best results will be when the largest mass of sample is extracted and when it is made up from the largest number of discrete sub-samples. The more extreme the non-uniformity, the more important this is.