Proficiency testing report
The Joint Research Centre in Geel on request of the DG ENER organised a proficiency test (PT) on the measurements of natural radioactivity (238U, 226Ra, 210Pb, 232Th, 228Ra, 228Th and 40K) in building materials. This PT was an integral part of the EC's work of realising verification of Member State's obligations towards Article 35 of the Euratom Treaty (ET). In addition, it also constitutes the JRC’s obligations towards the EC following Article 39 of the ET. The work was part of the quality control programme, which JRC-Geel is coordinating in order to assess the quality of the results collected by member state laboratories and reported to the Radioactivity Environmental Monitoring (REM) database.
The PT test items were prepared from two types of commercially available building materials; concrete and expanded clay blocks. The test items were shipped to 105 laboratories of which 96 laboratories submitted results. Out of the 1586 reported results, 94.7% of the z-scores and 73.1% of the zeta scores were satisfactory. A general conclusion is that no general problems was encountered. However, the vast amount of data generated in this PT will be used by different actors for important actions like identifying underperforming laboratories, investigate training needs and suggestions for possible improvements to international standards.
HULT Mikael;
SOBIECH-MATURA Katarzyna;
ROBOUCH Piotr;
EMTEBORG Hakan;
MARISSENS Gerd;
STROH Heiko;
MALO Petya;
2024-09-10
JRC-Geel
JRC135096
978-92-68-20593-8 (online),
978-92-68-20594-5 (print),
1831-9424 (online),
1018-5593 (print),
EUR 40024,
OP KJ-01-24-015-EN-N (online),
OP KJ-01-24-015-EN-C (print),
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC135096,
10.2760/0952660 (online),
10.2760/6530584 (print),
