Accelerator mass spectrometry long-lived radioisotopes

Elmore, D., and Phillips, F. M. (1987). Accelerator mass spectrometry for measurement of long-lived radioisotopes. Science 236 543-550. 

Accelerator Mass Spectrometry is a special tool for quantitative measurements of very long-lived radionuclides. This technique consists of counting the nuclides themselves instead of waiting for their decay. As for as the tandem accelerator is concerned, no molecular background exists because of the stripping process. Any isobaric background is also drastically suppressed due to the nuclear techniques involved in the measurements. There occurs an extremely wide area of applications in different fields because of the capability of the AMS technique to determine the radioisotopes at the faintest level (the isotopic concentrations down to the range of 10 in some cases). 

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