TOTAL POTASSIUM IN SOILS BY RADIOACTIVITY MEASUREMENTS

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Abstract
Summary: The beta‐ and gamma‐analysis methods were fully tested on nineteen British soils; ‘marker’ gamma photo‐peaks of daughter‐elements were used for estimating Th and U, and the 1.46 MeV−40K photo‐peak for K. The photo‐peaks for Th and U that give values for the K contents of the soil closest to the chemically determined values are 208Tl(ThC″)–2.615 MeV and 214Bi(RaC)+–0.609 MeV respecively. Reasonable values for the Th content of these soils are obtained by this method, but U contents seem to be considerably overestimated.