Simulation approach to coincidence summing in γ-ray spectrometry.

Some of the radionuclides used for efficiency calibration of a HPGe spectrometer are subject to coincidence-summing (CS) and account must be taken of the phenomenon to obtain quantitative results when counting samples to determine their activity. We have used MCNPX simulations, which do not take CS into account, to obtain γ-ray peak intensities that were compared to those observed experimentally. The loss or gain of a measured peak intensity relative to the simulated peak is attributed to CS. CS correction factors are compared with those of ETNA and GESPECOR. Application to a test sample prepared with known radionuclides gave values close to the published activities.