The reference peak areas of the 1995 IAEA test spectra for gamma-ray spectrum analysis programs are absolute and traceable

A previously validated algorithm for absolute peak area determination was used to verify the reference peak areas supplied with the 1995 IAEA test spectra for gamma-ray spectrometry. These reference peak areas turn out to be absolute and traceable to a precision of 0.9%: The reference peak areas are possibly too low by a factor 0.992±0.009. It is proposed to employ the test spectra and reference areas to validate the peak areas obtained with any algorithm in gamma-ray spectrometry.