Uranium without daughters

[Geoff]

The spectrum is from .5 grams of U3O8 in a glass vial, collected for 14,000 seconds with my 20x100mm NaI detector in a tungsten shield. Looks to be a pretty standard spectrum of 235-U and 238-U.

[valentin]

That is pretty cool. With uranium-ore, these peaks are mostly "burried below" all the scattered gammas from daughter decays.

[pietkuip]

So that is the tungsten K-alpha line at 59 keV?
Is that a reason to use a tungsten shield, to see actinide K-alphas?

[Geoff]

It would appear to be from tungsten xrays. I only use the tungsten shielding because I have it. I could make one out of lead, but the tungsten is more dense and much cleaner.