Browsing by Author "Dehqanzada, Rohafza"

Radium (Ra) is a naturally occurring radioactive metal, which is formed by the decay of uranium-238 and thorium-232 in the environment. In nature, radium occurs at trace levels in virtually all water, soil, rock and plants. 226Ra-, 228Ra, 224Ra, and 223Ra-isotopes are the most common isotopes of radium, and all isotopes are radioactive. The aim of the work was to study the behavior of radium in nature. In general, radium isotopes with variable activity concentrations in water and solid samples such as soil, and sediment can be measured with alpha- or gamma spectrometry or liquid scintillation counting (LSC). In this work, the measurements were done using gamma spectrometry with a Ge-detector, which is a semiconductor detector made of germanium. In addition, a very low level liquid scintillation spectrometer (Quantulus 1220) was also used. The determination of the PSA value (Pulse Shape Analysis) was successful and was determined experimentally with a Ra-226 standard sample. The activity of the Ra-226 standard sample obtained with Ge detectors was almost of the same order of magnitude as both theoretically and experimentally determined activities. The determined Ra-226 activities in water samples with gamma spectrometry were in good agreement with the activities obtained by LSC using α/β-discrimination