Chlorine measurements at the 5MV French AMS national facility ASTER: Associated external uncertainties and comparability with the 6MV DREAMS facility

Abstract

Abstract After 6 years of 36Cl routine operation, more than 6000 unknown samples have been measured at the 5MV French accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) national facility ASTER (CEREGE, Aix en Provence). This paper presents the long term behavior of ASTER through the analysis of the measurements of the most used chlorine standards and reference materials, KNSTD1600, SM-Cl-12 and SM-CL-13 over a 46 months’ time period. Comparison of measured chlorine concentrations (both 35Cl and 36Cl) from ice samples on two AMS facilities operating at 5MV (ASTER) and 6MV (DREAMS, Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf) and normalizing to two different reference materials agree within uncertainties making both reference materials (SM-Cl-12 and KNSTD1600) suitable for 36Cl measurement at ASTER.