LAFARA: a new underground laboratory in the French Pyrénées for ultra low-level gamma-ray spectrometry

We describe a new underground laboratory, namely LAFARA (for "LAboratoire de mesure des FAibles RAdioactivités"), that was recently created in the French Pyrénées. This laboratory is primarily designed to analyze environmental samples that display low radioactivity levels using gamma-ray spectrometry. Two high-purity germanium detectors were placed under 85 m of rock (ca. 215 m water equivalent) in the tunnel of Ferrières (Ariège, France). The background is thus reduced by a factor of ∼20 in comparison to above-ground laboratories. Both detectors are fully equipped so that the samples can be analyzed in an automatic mode without requiring permanent presence of a technician in the laboratory. Auto-samplers (twenty positions) and systems to fill liquid nitrogen automatically provide one month of autonomy to the spectrometers. The LAFARA facility allows us to develop new applications in the field of environmental sciences based on the use of natural radionuclides present at low levels in the environment. As an illustration, we present two of these applications: i) dating of marine sediments using the decay of (226)Ra in sedimentary barite (BaSO(4)), ii) determination of (227)Ac ((231)Pa) activities in marine sediment cores.