Results of international comparison tests on determination of ¹³⁷Cs activity concentration in soil samples

Abstract

In 2016—2019, comparison tests of different methods for quantitative determination of the content of the technogenic radionuclide 137Cs in soil samples were performed. Soil samples were collected from areas with high and low 137Cs contamination in Belarus. The intercomparison was performed as a part of an ongoing Russian—Swedish—Belarusian cooperation on the assessment of radioactive contamination of the environment. Three laboratories of the regular participants in the project and three laboratories from other facilities participated in the intercomparison that was focused on the samples of cultivated soil from the Gomel region (the first stage of comparisons, 3 samples) and the Grodno region (the second stage of comparisons, 4 samples). Results on activity concentrations in the samples presented by the participants were in satisfactory agreement with each other. The maximum deviation from the average value, that had been calculated for each sample based on the individual results from all laboratories, was 14%. Stage-averaged deviations from the inter-laboratory mean did not exceed 10%. Results of the comparison tests should be taken into consideration when comparing or merging experimental data from different laboratories participating in the Russian—Swedish—Belarusian cooperation project.

Keywords

• intercomparison
• soil
• 137cs
• belarus
• russia
• sweden