Kimiko Horiuchi

A new procedure for the determination of radium in water by extraction of radon and application of integral counting with a liquid scintillation counter

Abstract A new Ra determination method is devised, storing the sample in a glass bottle with a Teflon stopper in an upside-down position, extracting Rn with liquid scintillator solution and combining integral counting with a liquid scintillation counter. This method realizes a high sensitivity of 5 × 10 −13 Ci Ra, eliminates the tedious procedure of transferring Rn through the vacuum system to the detector and makes possible repeated determination of Ra on the same sample without any further chemical treatment except extraction.

A new method for the determination of radon in soil air by the «open vial» and integral counting with a liquid scintillation counter

A new method is described for the determination of Rn in soil gas. Open vials containing a liquid scintillator solution, suspended in a hole of the ground surface, absorb a fixed proportion of Rn present in soil gas. This allows the total Rn concentration to be determined. The method described is rapid, simple and reproducible. It should have many kinds of field application.

Matrix effects on epithermal neutron activation analysis of various kinds of reference materials

The improvement obtained by epithermal neutron activation analysis was studied in terms of the detection sensitivity and precision in the γ-ray spectrometry for geological and biological reference samples. For geological samples, small improvement was observed only for the elements As, Ba, Sb, Se and U. For biological samples, however, large improvement was observed for As, Br, Sb and U. The ratio of the resonance integral to the effective thermal-neutron capture cross section was observed for 19 nuclides. The effect of the (n, p) reaction to the determination of Al and Mg by the ordinary reaktor-neutron activation analysis was estimated.

Neutron activation analysis of Japanese standard rocks

Neutron activation analyses were performed for the newly issued reference rocks, GSJ JA-1 and JB-2, and also for the widely distributed GSJ JG-1 and JB-1. The contents of fourteen elements could be newly determined for the former two rocks and those of eleven elements were re-determined for the latter rocks.

Determination of radon concentration in spring gases with a portable semiconductor detector

Abstract A portable integrating radon meter, alpha METER-400, was tested. The instrument detects α-rays of energy greater than 2.59 MeV. With this detector, the concentration of 222 Rn in spring gases at volcanic regions was determined. The results were compared with those observed by the liquid scintillation counting method.