Performance of the new single stage accelerator mass spectrometer at the SUERC

A NEC 250 kV single stage accelerator mass spectrometer (SSAMS) has been installed along-side our five year old 5 MV spectrometer. The new instrument is intended to take over routine radiocarbon measurement, thereby providing more capacity for our rapidly growing cosmogenic nuclide programme. Initial tests show that although flawed the SSAMS sufficiently mimics the good performance of the first machine; high-precision 14C/13C measurement is being achieved with a background limited by sample preparation.