Radionuclide determination in water

In the years that followed the methods were refined and the measurement technique improved. Standardized, generally accepted and practised methods were soon available. 

The rapid developments in this period were not so much the result of the increasing use of radionuclides or the beginnings of nuclear energy, but rather they stemmed from the massive scale of nuclear weapons tests carried out above-ground in the fifties and sixties. The radioactivity liberated by these tests necessitated a wide range of measurements in 

Water analyses are still performed today with the aim of immission monitoring, but the significance of the measurement task has shifted considerably, towards emission measurement, i.e. towards the monitoring of users or producers of radioactive substances. Together with the more stringent requirements and other international recommendations regarding the detection sensitivity of measurement techniques, there has been a marked effect on the methods employed. New measurement instructions meeting these requirements have been available for some years. 

However, there have also been pronounced changes in the measurement technique itself. The introduction of microprocessor technology and improvements to detectors, above all in the case of low-level, large-surface counters, has made measurement easier, more precise and more reliable. The state of the art will thus probably not change considerably in the foreseeable future. 

Nevertheless, depending on the task involved, decisions on the extent to which a selective analysis of certain nuclides or groups of nuclides is necessary and possible still have to be taken on a case-to-case basis. 

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