I'd like to know which of these detectors is sufficiently sensitive to low energy beta radiation that they are able to distinguish between, for example, a vegetable oil (which is radioactive by C-14) from a petroleum oil (which is not).
The problem is that the beta radiation from C-14 is rather low energy at 0.1565 MeV, and low energy beta radiation has difficulty penetrating some gas enclosures. So I'm not expecting that the unit will be correctly calibrated at these low energy levels, but I'd like to know if it can detect the difference between old oil and new.
I'm also aware that the company gives the detection limits as >0.1 MeV but this is clearly written with gamma rays in mind and I don't know if modern carbon is sufficiently radioactive to be detected. However, I did note that someone here was able to detect the radioactivity of potassium (which emits beta and gamma radiation of higher energy), so I have some hopes I can detect the radioactivity of carbon. For total radioactivity comparison, potassium is 973 dpm/gram while "living" carbon (with C-14) is 14 dpm/gram. |
Can we detect C-14 Beta radiation?
Posted - 07/05/2013 : 01:04:39
