Evaluation of hand-held gamma spectrometry instrument as confirm technique for environmental analysis of thorium in soil

Abstract

Gamma spectrometry hand-held instrument may show considerable analytical performances and even if they are not specifically taught for quantitative environmental analysis, in this work we evaluate the performance of one of them in this field comparing the results with ICP-MS, the reference technique in this field. In our work we want to evaluate the possibility to use the analytical performances offered by a portable gamma spectrometer as confirmatory technique. We used for this test soils contaminated with thorium, an increasing interest pollutant, widely present in natural sediments and also emitted in environment by several anthropogenic processes such modern agricultural practices, industrial and military application. Thorium is expected also to increase in interest, for its possible exploitation as nuclear fuel instead of uranium by some countries.