Re: conversion to Becquerels

[mikekay@teleport.com (Michael Kay)]

>Hello,
>        Would you tell me the conversion of uCi to becquerels?
>Is a Gbecquerel a 1000 becquerels? Is it a requirement for air shipments 
>that the activity be in Gbecquerels?  Unless you think anybody else is 
>interested you may contact me on my E-mail line.
 
The units of a Bq are 1/sec; often referred to as disintegrations per
second. This represents the number of radioactive disintegrations per second
(this is not the same as counts per second).

The microCurie is 37,000 disintegrations per second or 37 kBq. 

A Curie represents the number of disintegrations per second from one gram of
Ra-226. Unfortunately, this number will change
with every determination of the molecular weight of Ra-226, or with the
improvement in measurement of Avogadro's number. Therefore, the value of the
Curie was fixed at 3.7 E10 disintegrations per second. The millicurie and
microcurie are very convenient units for
laboratory and medical experimentation, diagnosis, and treatment. Of course,
that meant that they had to be done away with because
it was very easy for a user to gain a "feel" for the unit. It will be a
couple of generations before users have a feel for kBq and MBq. 

The GBq is the closest that the Harmonized System of Units can come to the
Curie. One Curie is 37 GBq.

Transport index and other measures of hazard warning were developed for much
larger shipments than milli- or micro-Curie level.

So, your microCurie shipment would be 3.7 E-5 GBq or 0.000037 GBq.

Yes, I have shipped material writing those numbers in the blanks.

Hope this helps

Michael Kay, ScD, CHMM
Senior Consultant
Desco Industrial Group, Inc.
Portland, OR