Potassium Chloride Salt - Radioactive Salt

[Sesselmann]

It seems unlikely, although KCl usually doesn't have much activity it usually stands out against the background, but what size scintillator are you using?

Small crystals are almost blind to gamma rays with energy over 1 MeV.

Steven

[Gwyddion]

I don't know about the Radiacode 103 device, which is what the spectrum I posted was recorded with, all the specs state is that the scintillator is CsI - it can't be more than around 1cm^3 though, as the device is quite small. It gives some nice peaks at 1588, 911 and 583 with thoriated tungsten (posted pic), so not totally blind :-).

My home made BGO detector has two crystals side by side, each 30 x 10 x 10mm. It gives a better K-40 peak than the one I posted, but still no difference between the sample and background. I think I might test my "99.9%-pure, food grade KCl" and see what it really is!

Agreed - need to get a bigger crystal, though the aperture of the PMT is only 25mm square.

---Ken---

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[Jim Kovalchick]

How confident are you in this detector's sensitivity? Have you tried it with something like Th 232 which gives some peaks on either side of the K 40 peak? I doubt your food grade KCl is devoid of K 40.

[Svilen]

Hi Gwyddion, since the sample is not very active in compare to the background, you may consider measuring it inside a lead shielding. I guess you still don't have one, but you can check for some ideas here in the forum and start working on your next project :)