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INAA: Costs

For price estimates, please contact our NAA supervisor at reactor "at" engr.wisc.edu.  Costs are based on direct charges on our standard Rate Schedule which may change from year to year.  The items charged are personnel time, irradiation time, multichannel analyzer/computation time, and materials (such as irradiation containers and standard materials).

Batches are divided into groups of 8 unknowns. Each group is irradiated with a standard, and the cost of preparing, irradiating, and counting the standard is charged. The experimenter is urged to include one or more "blank" samples in the batch to assure that contamination of vials or of solutions used in preparing samples does not give false information. Blanks are also charged for but, like duplicate samples, blanks are a wise investment when considering accuracy and reproducibility of results.

Element(s) to be determined have the first impact on cost. Elements with activation products having similar half lives can often be analyzed simultaneously. The three element tables below are not all inclusive -- only elements we have previously run are indicated. The attached "Estimated Sensitivity" sheet is a more reliable indicator for whether a particular element can be detected by instrumental NAA. The element lists are divided into for short, intermediate, and long-lived activation product half life. Some elements appear in more than one list. 

TABLE 1 SHORT LIVED INDICATORS

Ag   Al   Br   Ca   Cd   Cl   Co

Cs   Cu   Ga   Hf   I    In   K

Mg   Mn   Na   Ni   Pd   Pt   Se

Sm   Sn   Sr   Ti   V    W

TABLE 2 INTERMEDIATE LIVED INDICATORS (<2 days)

Ar   Ag   Br   Cd   Cu   Er   Gd

Ga   Ge   Hf   In   Mn   Hg   Mo

Nd   Pd   Pt   K    Pm   Re   Sm

Na   Sr   Te   Y    Zr

TABLE 3 LONG LIVED INDICATORS (>24 hours)

Ag   As   Au   Ba   Cd   Ce   Co

Cr   Cs   Eu   Fe   Hf   Hg   In

Ir   La   Lu   Ni   Ru   Sb   Sc

Se   Sn   Ta   Te   Th   U    W

Yb   Zn
Analysis for each element list will require a different irradiation, decay, and counting time. Analysis with emphasis placed on a particular element or group of elements may preclude other elements on the same list. Interferences may also occur in some samples.

If an analysis requires determination of elements in one of the tables only, one irradiation and one count would usually be required. If the analysis required one element from Table 1 and all the remaining elements were from Table 3, two separate irradiations and two counts would be required. Often elements in Table 2 can be determined by a second count of a single irradiation.