Application of portable liquid scintillation counter for on-field measurement of tritium in aqueous samples during radiation emergency

Screening of aqueous samples for H-3 contamination is required to decide suitability of water intended for human consumption during radiation emergency. BARC, Trombay has recently procured Portable Triathler liquid scintillation counter as a screening tool for on-site response to radiation emergency. For this purpose, parameters like, different available scintillators, scintillator to sample ratio and influence of different capacity scintillation vials were optimized for H-3 concentration measurement. The study indicated that for 7 mL vials, the optimized scintillator to sample ratio was 4:1 for Optiphase Hisafe II, Ultima Gold Ultra Low Level Tritium, Aqualight AB and Dioxane based scintillators whereas for Ultima Gold AB and Optiphase Hisafe III scintillators it was 3:1. In case of 20 mL vials, the ratio was optimized to 8:1 for all the above mentioned six scintillators. Additionally, the effect of applying counting efficiency using calibration curves generated using distilled water and that obtained using optimized scintillator to sample ratio in various spiked water samples was also studied. Results in H-3 concentration (2000-5700 Bq/mL) indicate about +/- 10% deviation using both the methods for commercially available scintillators. However, in case of Dioxane based scintillator, the deviation was higher (20%). For analysis of H-3 concentration similar to 200 Bq/mL using commercially available scintillators results in higher deviation of about 21% due to unreliable quench indicating parameter for count rate less than 4000. The study indicated that calibration curves constructed using optimized parameters are universally applicable for determination of H-3 concentration in wide variety of water samples.