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Standardization of tritiated water by the CIEMAT/NIST and TDCR methods

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Abstract

The activity of tritiated water has been standardized by two liquid scintillation counting methods: The CIEMAT/NIST method with the 54Mn-standard efficiency tracing and the triple-to-double coincidence ratio (TDCR) method. The samples were prepared with Ultima Gold™ AB liquid scintillation cocktail in low-potassium glass vials. In the application of the CIEMAT/NIST method, the computer program EMILIA was used to calculate the efficiency of 3H and 54Mn according to the KL1L2L3M atomic rearrangement model. And the detection efficiency of the TDCR counter was calculated using TDCR07 code, which makes it possible to allow for the potential asymmetry between the three photomultiplier tubes. The influence of stopping power and kB factor is discussed in the paper. When a power approach is adopted for the stopping power for electrons below 1 keV and kB is chosen to be 0.0075 cm/MeV, the relative deviation will be only 0.3% between the two methods.

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Correspondence to DaQing Yuan.

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Wu, Y., Liu, H., Liang, J. et al. Standardization of tritiated water by the CIEMAT/NIST and TDCR methods. Sci. China Technol. Sci. 58, 559–564 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-014-5739-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-014-5739-2

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