Basic Metrology (Archive): Blind Measurement Comparisons of the USA and UK Pb-210 National Standards

Summary

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Radioactivity Group, and the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) of the UK, exchanged ²¹⁰Pb solution sources for a blind measurement comparison.

Description

The solutions from each laboratory were linked to their primary standardizations and national standards. Measurements by NIST on both solutions were performed by three methods: viz., liquid scintillation (LS) standardizations (with ³H-standard efficiency tracing); with relative photonic emission rates with a 4πγ(NaI) sandwich detector; and by high-resolution Si(Li) spectrometry.  All three methods were linked to extant NIST standards, which are disseminated as Standard Reference Material SRM 4337. The NPL measurements were based on four methods: high resolution HPGe gamma-ray spectrometry; Čerenkov counting of the ²¹⁰Bi progeny; LS counting with efficiency tracing with a ³H standard; and measuring the ²¹⁰Po daughter, in equilibrium, by alpha spectrometry, where the efficiency was traced with ²⁰⁸Po. For both solutions, the massic activity measurements from the two laboratories agreed to about 0.5 %, which was well within the 1.1 % propagated standard uncertainty assigned to the two sets of measurements. These findings add support to an earlier suspicion that the measurement uncertainty previously assigned to the certified massic activity values for both the NIST ²¹⁰Pb SRM and that for the NPL disseminated standards may be overestimated.

Notice of Online Archive: This project ended in 2008 and thus this page is no longer being updated and remains online for informational and historical purposes only. The information is accurate as of February 2021. For questions about page contents, please contact Ronald Collé.