Northern Michigan University, Physics, Marquette, MI 49855
Soil samples were collected and analyzed for naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORMs) from Eastern Marquette County in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The goal was to determine if fly ash from two coal-fired power plants located in Marquette County are contributing to the level of NORMs in the soil. A 2-in by 2-in NaI detector was used to obtain the gamma ray spectrum from each sample and multi-peak fitting was used to decompose the small, overlapping gamma ray peaks of the man-made 137Cs (662 keV) and the naturally occurring 214Bi (609 keV) from topsoil samples. The measured activities of these two isotopes in the topsoil and 214Bi in the sub-soil over the sampling area will be presented along with conclusions about their respective distribution in the search area.
[Abstract (DOC)]