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EXPERIMENTS AT MODANE UNDERGROUND LABORATORY OR THE SWAN SONG OF RADIOCARBON ß-COUNTING BY GAS PROPORTIONAL COUNTER

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2021

Michel Fontugne ,
Christine Hatté Open the ORCID record for Christine Hatté [Opens in a new window]  and
Michel Jaudon
Michel Fontugne
Affiliation:
Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, LSCE/IPSL, UMR 8212, CEA CNRS UVSQ, Université Paris-Saclay, F-91191Gif-sur-Yvette, France LAMPEA - UMR 7269, Maison Méditerranéenne des Sciences de l’Homme, 5 rue du Château de l’Horloge, 13094, Aix-en-Provence, France
Christine Hatté*
Affiliation:
Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, LSCE/IPSL, UMR 8212, CEA CNRS UVSQ, Université Paris-Saclay, F-91191Gif-sur-Yvette, France
Michel Jaudon
Affiliation:
Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, LSCE/IPSL, UMR 8212, CEA CNRS UVSQ, Université Paris-Saclay, F-91191Gif-sur-Yvette, France
*
*Corresponding author. Email: Christine.Hatte@lsce.ipsl.fr
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Abstract

In 1991, a 14C ß-counting installation with four proportional CO2 gas counters was tested at the Modane underground laboratory, 1700 m below the summit of Pointe du Fréjus, reducing the muon flux to 4 muons per square meter and per day. With cosmic radiation attenuated by a factor of 2.106, the background level of the counters was reduced by 65 to 85% while its variability was reduced by a factor of 30–80 depending on the type of counter. The dating limit of these counters extends to well beyond 60,000 years.

Keywords

ß-countingunderground laboratory
Type
Technical Note
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 64 , Issue 3: Seven Decades of Radiocarbon Dating: Remembering the Pioneers & Looking Towards the Future. Part 1 of 2 , June 2022 , pp. 607 - 613
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press for the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona

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Footnotes

†

Deceased

References

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