Application of NaI(T1) Scintillation Detector to Measurement of Tritium Concentration

Measurements of tritium concentration in various media have been successfully performed by detecting with an ordinary NaI(Tl) scintillation counter the bremsstrahlung emitted from tritium decay. To distinguish meaningful signals from noises emanating mainly from thermoelectrons present in the phototube, differences in rise time were discriminated by means of an electronic circuit, instead of separation by pulse height analysis. This pulse-shape discriminator successfully reduced noise counts below 18 keV in a multichannel analyzer from 100 cpm to 4 cpm, which permitted direct counting of tritiated water as dilute as 1 μCi/ml, without requiring any complicated preparation.