Comparative study of quenching correction procedures for 90Sr/90Y determination by Cerenkov, liquid scintillation and plastic scintillation techniques Original Research Article

90Sr is a beta emitter radionuclide produced in the fission processes of some nuclear activities. Its chemical equivalence to Ca makes its incorporation into the trophic chain and, finally, into humans, a relatively easy process. 90Sr achieves a secular equilibrium with the high-energy beta emitter 90Y in only a few weeks. Liquid scintillation and Cerenkov are the two radiochemical techniques used for 90Sr/90Y determination, but plastic scintillation has now appeared as a new alternative. In this work, chemical and colour procedures for 90Sr/90Y determination using the three techniques are compared. The results show that best values are obtained with liquid and plastic scintillation techniques, using colour quenching correction and transformed spectral index of the external standard (T-Sie) as quenching parameter. In these conditions, relative errors for low activity samples ≤2 Bq−1 always <3%.