Development of Superheated Emulsion Technique for alpha activity measurements

A fast screening Superheated Emulsion Technique (SET) has been developed for measuring alpha activity in aqueous solutions. Since the alpha particles have short ranges ( ∼ 40 μ m ), it is necessary to have superheated liquid droplets in the closest vicinity of the alpha emitting radionuclide to detect alpha events quantitatively. The inherent ability of SET in discriminating alpha events from beta and gamma events makes it very useful technique in terms of ease and duration of analysis. The results obtained for analysis of uranium, thorium and plutonium are presented in this paper.