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Environmental gamma background measurements in China Jinping Underground Laboratory

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Abstract

To determine the environmental gamma background levels which affects rare events experiments, we measured in situ gamma spectrum at four locations in the China Jinping Underground Laboratory. The integral background count rates (40–2,700 keV) varied from 3.76 to 74.1 cps. The average count rate of the measurements inside the CJPL was 73.4 cps. The spectrometer was calibrated with a 152Eu point source and Monte Carlo simulation to obtain the activity conversion factors for the rock and the air, respectively. The rocks that surrounded the CJPL was characterized by very low activity concentrations of 238U (3.69–4.21 Bq kg−1), 232Th (0.52–0.64 Bq kg−1) and 40K (4.28 Bq kg−1).

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Acknowledgments

The help from Prof. Feng Tiancheng and Dr. Wu Rui is greatly acknowledged. This work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 11175099, No. 10935005, No. 10945002, No. 11275107) and National Basic Research program of China (973 Program) (2010CB833006).

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Correspondence to Jianping Cheng.

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Zeng, Z., Su, J., Ma, H. et al. Environmental gamma background measurements in China Jinping Underground Laboratory. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 301, 443–450 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-014-3114-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-014-3114-1

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