AW: [ RadSafe ] Liquid scintillation counting

[Franz Schönhofer]

Dear Mattias,

I have been working (not exclusively) with LSC for almost 30 years and my
name can be found as editor on LSC conference proceedings and even more on
publications. I partly understand your reasoning, partly I do not.
Especially I wonder, what you need your LSC for, because this would shed
some light on what kind of LS counters you need.

There is no doubt, that the market has been narrowed considerably by the
purchase of both Packard and Wallac Oy by Perkin Elmer. (Packard might be
still a trade mark, but it is owned by Perkin Elmer.) Wallac Oy, based in
Turku, Finland (right across the sea from Forsmark) was most probably the
foremost innovative company for LS counters, but their production of
counters was discontinued after the take-over with the exception of the
"Quantulus" ultra low-level counter. 

I might guess from your mail that you look for counters to be used in
environmental radioactivity. Since Packard-TriCarb does not exist any more
under this name it is close to be a Perkin-Elmer hegemony. Beckman used to
produce LSC equipment, I do not know whether they still do. Check Google. In
Japan Aloka seems to still produce LS counters, but I have no further
information except that they look quite similar to the Wallac counters. .
Companies like Kontron have since almost decades stopped production of LS
counters.  

Yes, I have a very particular opinion on the brands still offered. I have
tested the prototype of Quantulus (Wallac Oy) in 1983, have purchased the
first commercially sold counter, have bought altogether five of these
counters. My job was to do environmental monitoring, ranging from tritium
(without enrichment) to "gross beta", "gross alpha", in precipitation and
surface waters, Rn-222 and Ra-226 in drinking water, Sr-90 in food and
environmental indicators, C-14 in food etc. etc. The counters were very
robust, we had within all those years only a few minor mechanical problems
for all of them. I do not know, which counter you used for your
investigations, but for environmental surveillance I can only recommend the
Quantulus. 

Ifall du önskar mera informationer kontakta mig personligen. Hoppas att det
katastrofhotade kärnkraftverk Forsmark överlevar massmediarnas angrepp!

Best regards, vänlig hälsning,

Franz

Franz Schoenhofer, PhD
MinRat i.R.
Habicherg. 31/7
A-1160 Wien/Vienna
AUSTRIA


-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl [mailto:radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl] Im Auftrag
von Olsson Mattias :MSO
Gesendet: Freitag, 16. Februar 2007 08:02
An: radsafe at radlab.nl
Betreff: [ RadSafe ] Liquid scintillation counting

Dear all,

Considering that liquid scintillation counting is a quite common and easy
way to quantify radioactivity in many cases (recently I have mostly used it
for H-3, C-14 and Sr-90 samples) I find it difficult so get a good grip on
the scintillation counter market. Is it a world wide Perkin-Elmer/Packard
Tri-Carb hegemony these days?

It would be interesting to know which the interesting suppliers of LS
counters in the world are and if there are any particular opinions on brands
and models!

All the best,

Mattias Olsson

-- 
Mattias Olsson, FTKS
Forsmarks Kraftgrupp AB
742 03 Östhammar

t. 0173-81952
m. 0705-801952
e. mso at forsmark.vattenfall.se
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