Quantification of Uncertainty in Tritium Analysis of Groundwater Samples

Quantifying uncertainties of nuclear assay always involves steps followed: finding the sources of uncertainty; giving values of the parameters; quantifying all of the individual uncertainty components; combining the uncertainties; report uncertainty. The example given discusses and quantifies the uncertainty sources for determination of tritium in water samples using electrolytic enrichment and liquid scintillation spectrometry. The uncertainty components involves enrichment factor, weight of the water transferred, net count of the sample, the activity of the standard, net count of the standard. Combined all these components, and then obtain the uncertainty of the tritium activity in water sample.