Radiochemistry Laboratory

Willard S. Moore, Professor Emeritus and Director
Claudia Benitez-Nelson, Assistant Professor

The radiochemistry laboratory has four high resolution gamma spectrometer systems including one large volume Ge(Li) detector, one intrinsic germanium detector with a 1 cm diameter well, another intrinsic detector with a 2 cm diameter well and a low energy planar detector. These detectors are interfaced to a desktop computer and a Sun network through separate ORTEC Spectramasters. Data reduction is accomplished using the program Hypermet which we have adapted to run on our computers. We also operate 16 alpha spectrometer systems, 8 gas phase alpha scintillation counters to measure Rn-222 as well as low background gross alpha and beta proportional counters. We have recently developed a delayed coincidence system to measure Rn-220 and Rn-219. A low background liquid scintillation counter is used to measure low levels of C-14 and tritium. These instruments allow us to measure all of the isotopes in the U and Th decay chains having half lives greater than a few minutes as well as gamma-emitting fallout and cosmic-ray produced isotopes.