Radioactivity determination of sealed pure beta-sources by surface dose measurements and Monte Carlo simulations

This study aims to determine the activity of a sealed pure beta-source by measuring the surface dose rate using an extrapolation chamber. A conversion factor (cGy s−1 Bq−1), which was defined as the ratio of surface dose rate to activity, can be calculated by Monte Carlo simulations of the extrapolation chamber measurement. To validate this hypothesis the certified activities of two standard pure beta-sources of Sr/Y-90 and Si/P-32 were compared with those determined by this method. In addition, a sealed test source of Sr/Y-90 was manufactured by the HANARO reactor group of KAERI (Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute) and used to further validate this method. The measured surface dose rates of the Sr/Y-90 and Si/P-32 standard sources were 4.615×10−5 cGy s−1 and 2.259×10−5 cGy s−1, respectively. The calculated conversion factors of the two sources were 1.213×10−8 cGy s−1 Bq−1 and 1.071×10−8 cGy s−1 Bq−1, respectively. Therefore, the activity of the standard Sr/Y-90 source was determined to be 3.995 kBq, which was 2.0% less than the certified value (4.077 kBq). For Si/P-32 the determined activity was 2.102 kBq, which was 6.6% larger than the certified activity (1.971 kBq). The activity of the Sr/Y-90 test source was determined to be 4.166 kBq, while the apparent activity reported by KAERI was 5.803 kBq. This large difference might be due to evaporation and diffusion of the source liquid during preparation and uncertainty in the amount of weighed aliquot of source liquid. The overall uncertainty involved in this method was determined to be 7.3%. We demonstrated that the activity of a sealed pure beta-source could be conveniently determined by complementary combination of measuring the surface dose rate and Monte Carlo simulations.