An Approach to discriminatively determine thoron and radon emanation rates for a granular material with a scintillation cell

Sakoda, Akihiro   ; Meisenberg, O.*; Tschiersch, J.*

In the present study, the methodology for the discriminative determination of thoron and radon emanation rates from a granular material has been examined using a flow-through scintillation cell and so-called sandwich sample. The mathematical model was developed to differentiate total alpha counts into thoron- and radon-associated counts. This method was experimentally validated, and then the detection limits and uncertainties were evaluated to characterize this method. It was concluded that the present method is advantageous to a sample that has much higher Ra activity than Ra if the emanation fractions are similar between thoron and radon.