PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF THE EQUIPMENT FOR MEASURING RADIOACTIVITY IN WHOLE FOODSTUFFS WITHOUT DESTRUCTIVE SAMPLE PREPARATION DEVELOPED AFTER THE FUKUSHIMA NPP ACCIDENT.

Recently, several types of instruments for measuring radioactivity in whole foodstuff were developed by manufacturers, in which any sample preparation technique such as machining was avoided, and such types of instruments are employed by agricultural producers or municipality radioactivity testing stations in Fukushima. In this study, radioactivity in various kinds of 91 samples collected by residents were measured by use of instruments for radioactivity measurement in whole samples, and the activity in each sample was also measured by use of the conventional gamma-ray spectrometry technique using calibrated Ge detectors after the sample machining procedure. The results obtained by instruments for measurement in whole samples were roughly proportional to the result obtained by a conventional technique, although large differences or unexpected variations were found in some specimens.