A method of simply and quickly determining .alpha.-ray releasing nuclides
having long half-life without carrying out a chemical separation is
provided.By inputting a data of pulses incident to an .alpha.-ray
detector in a computer, obtaining time distribution of the incident
pulses by using a very short time measuring timer and plotting, and
fitting the linear originated in a random event corresponding to the
background and the non-linear originated in the correlated events of
parent nuclides-progenies by using the least squares method, the whole
generating probability P (t) from the parent nuclide to the progeny
thereof is obtained. By subtracting the random events portion from the
P(t), the correlated events portion is extracted. The radioactivity per
unit can be obtained by dividing the extracted correlated events portion
by the measured time, the amount of the supplied sample and the counting
efficiency. Also, by determining nuclides unnecessary for the measurement
by this method and removing the determined nuclides from the energy
spectra of objective nuclides to thereby lower the background, the
objective nuclides can be determined by using pulse-height
discrimination.