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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2020 Mar 12.
Published in final edited form as: J Radioanal Nucl Chem. 2019;322(3):10.1007/s10967-019-06711-6. doi: 10.1007/s10967-019-06711-6

Table 5.

231Pa reference material uncertainty budget for amount of 231Pa contained in each unit

Uncertainty component Description Assessment type Ui %
b231Pa Measurement repeatability; standard uncertainty of 5 independent measurements for 231Pa molality of RM solution. A 0.032
b233Pa Measurement repeatability; standard uncertainty of 8 independent measurements for 233Pa molality of S solution. A 0.023
bC112-A IDMS tracer; standard uncertainty for uranium molality of diluted CRM 112-A solution used as U reverse-spike. B 0.090
Decay Decay correction; uncertainties associated with the 233Pa half-life and the interval between initial 233Pa purification and IDMS measurements. B 0.035
Efficiency Transmission efficiency; uncertainty of correction factor to compensate for differing mass spectrometer transmission efficiencies between uranium and protactinium during IDMS measurements. B 0.030
MIDMS Aliquot mass; uncertainty component associated with mass measurements of solution aliquots for IDMS. B 0.085
Munit Unit Unit mass; uncertainty component encompassing the maximum difference in the mass of dispensed solution aliquots and potential evaporative loss during dispensing. B 0.027
MassSpec Mass Mass spectrometry; estimated uncertainty associated with mass spectrometry including potential differences in mass fractionation of protactinium and uranium in MC-ICP-MS, blank corrections, background corrections, and collector efficiencies. B 0.086
RU010 CRM U010; standard uncertainty of n(235U)/n(238U) ratio for CRM used to calibrate the mass spectrometer. B 0.051
Remainder Remainder correction; estimated uncertainty for 233U measurements resulting from the proportion of 233Pa remaining in IDMS samples after 10 half-lives. B 0.008
Relative combined standard uncertainty 0.173%
Relative expanded uncertainty (k = 2) 0.35%

Assessment Type A denotes evaluation by statistical methods and Type B denotes evaluation by other methods. ui % is the percent relative standard uncertainty for the indicated uncertainty component. The uncertainty model presented in this table was calculated using the GUM Workbench software (Metrodata GmbH, Weil am Rhein, Germany)