Expanded Applications of Liquid Scintillation Counting and Several Related Issues

Abstract

Liquid scintillation counting (LSC) is widely used in the field of radiation measurements. Some main developments in the application of LSC in our laboratory have been introduced briefly in this paper. These developments include: the use of LSC alone to determine 152Eu and 241Am simultaneously instead of using the common γ spectrometry, and the use of LSC in combination with α or γ spectrometry in various cases. All these developments expand the applications of LSC, which can lead to significant increase in production of radioactive measurement work. In addition, we have discussions about several issues which are very important to LSC application, i.e. the quenching effect on α/β discrimination, the influences of anticoincidence shield on count rates for various kinds of radionuclides, the effect of statistical fluctuations in external standard spectrum on quench index parameter, and the long-term stability on basic performances of LSC cocktails.