Analytical round robins were established to allow laboratories responsible for the analysis of (nuclear) wastes glasses to compare their analytical capabilities and techniques with one another in a non-competitive atmosphere. In addition the quality of analyses using different analytical techniques on the same materials could be compared. Analytical Round Robin 7 had two primary objectives: 1) to evaluate the effect of using the same analytical reference glass as a reference standard for bias correcting analytical results for all the participating laboratories in making the analyses; and 2) to discuss the analytical methods and results from the participating laboratories between the participants for the purpose of evaluating quality and interlaboratory consistency. This paper will primarily address the first objective.

The purpose of an analytical reference material is to bring the analytical results from various laboratories into better agreement by providing them a common reference point No reference glass is likely to be ideal for each element in the glass being analyzed. Obviously, the closer the reference material is to the unknown, the more confidence there will be in the results because less judgement is called for. Use of the reference glass to bias correct analytical results for a standard set of analyses from several laboratories provides the data needed to determine the effectiveness of an Analytical Reference Glass (ARG) in producing interlaboratory agreement. Concurrently, whether or not the analytical results using ARG-1 are more valid or systematically biased can be evaluated using standard statistical methods. The conclusion is that bias correcting with a standard glass such as ARG-1 for results obtained by the inductively coupled plasma - atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES) analytical technique produces more accurate results.