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Quality control in the analysis of radioactivity from the oil exploration sector

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Abstract

The presence of 226Ra, 228Ra and 210Pb in the production of oil is now a well-known phenomenon. An effort has been undertaken to establish quality control procedures and to produce an in-house reference material. Scale build-up has a significant amount of iron, barium and strontium and as such self-attenuation of photons, especially the 46.5 keV photon from 210Pb can significantly underestimate the radioactivity concentration. A procedure was developed to prepare an in-house standard using only a 20-g sample of scale obtained from west Texas. An evaluation of the homogeneity, counting procedures and determination of the self-attenuation factors are presented.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nuclear Engineering Teaching Lab, University of Texas at Austin, Pickle Research Campus R-9000, Austin, TX, 78712, USA

    Sheldon Landsberger, Jacob Morton & Michael Yoho

  2. Enviroklean Product Development Inc. (EPDI), 9227 Thomasville Dr., Houston, TX, 77064, USA

    Sheldon Landsberger

Authors
  1. Sheldon Landsberger
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  2. Jacob Morton
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  3. Michael Yoho
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Correspondence to Sheldon Landsberger.

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Landsberger, S., Morton, J. & Yoho, M. Quality control in the analysis of radioactivity from the oil exploration sector. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 307, 2539–2542 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-015-4555-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-015-4555-x

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