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Strategy for the determination of mixtures of alpha and beta emitters in water samples with a combination of rapid methods

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Abstract

Quantification of several alpha and beta emitters in mixtures of radionuclides arouses great interest in many fields such as surveillance around nuclear power plants, radioecology, accidental situations or drinking water control. Radiochemical separations are commonly used to deal with this issue. However, deconvolution methods for the analysis of LS spectra have been developed to avoid time-consuming radiochemical separations. The deconvolution procedure usually consists of the comparison of the spectrum that has to be analysed with a set of standard spectra. In order to obtain reliable results, the library of spectra used in the deconvolutions must fit with the analysed sample. For this reason, in order to determine all radionuclides included in the drinking water directive it has been established a strategy to select the radionuclides whose LS spectra must be included in the Partial least squares (PLS) model.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the Spanish Nuclear Safety Council for the project “Rapid methods for the simultaneous determination of alpha and beta emitters by LSC in water” the Spanish science and innovation ministry [Grant Number CTM2014-55191] and the Catalan government [Grant Number AGAUR 2014SGR1277]. Jordi Fons Castells also wishes to acknowledge the Spanish ministry of economy and competitively for the Ph.D. Grant FPI BES 2012-052590.

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Fons-Castells, J., Tent-Petrus, J. & Llauradó, M. Strategy for the determination of mixtures of alpha and beta emitters in water samples with a combination of rapid methods. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 314, 797–802 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-017-5401-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-017-5401-0

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