Re: Critics Allege Infant Mortality Rate

[Bob Flood <bflood@SLAC.Stanford.EDU>]

>   Maybe I missed something earlier, but where would the mis-identification
>of K-40 with Sr-90 occur. I was under the impression that the K-40 has
>a very active gamma (about 1460 KeV) however, the Sr-90 is no where close.
>Even if you were to measure the Y-90 counterpart the energies are so far
>off, I don't know that you could really confuse the two? If Im off base
here let me know.

I may have made an assumption that might not be valid - I would expect that
Sr-90 would be evaluated using a beta analysis, since gamma would be
impractical (a chemical extraction would alter the Sr/Y relationship, and
the Y-90 photons are too few to rely on, anyway). I would also expect a
budget-constrained study that is looking for Sr-90 to use a gross beta
counting method and make an adjustment for K-40, which I assume could be
done from gamma spec results of the same sample.
============================
Bob Flood
Dosimetry Group Leader
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
bflood@slac.stanford.edu


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