International Journal of
Physical Sciences

  • Abbreviation: Int. J. Phys. Sci.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN: 1992-1950
  • DOI: 10.5897/IJPS
  • Start Year: 2006
  • Published Articles: 2572

Full Length Research Paper

The accuracy of the absolute NAA method based on the analysis of standard reference materials (SRMs)

Ibrahim  Alfadil  Alnour*, Noorddin Ibrahim and liew Hwi Fen      
Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Skudai, Johor, Malaysia.
Email: [email protected]

  •  Accepted: 23 July 2011
  •  Published: 02 September 2011

Abstract

The aim of this study was to demonstrate and validate the use of the absolute NAA method, inside the Malaysian nuclear agency (MNA) research reactor, by analyzing the IAEA SRMs; soil-1 and soil-7. The analytical results showed that the deviations between experimental and certified values were mostly less than 10% with Z-score ranging from 0 to 2, and only for few element it exceeds 20%. In general, the results for soil-1 and soil-7 obtained  from research reactor at irradiation positions 10, 22, 27 and 31 inside the rotary rack agree reasonably well with the certified values.

 

Key words: Neutron activation analysis (NAA), absolute NAA method, accuracy, standard reference materials (SRMs), Z-score.