Research and application of isotope techniques
are only possible with analytical facilities offering adequate
precision and accuracy. The Water Resources Programme's laboratory
offers analytical support and services for ensuring the quality
of isotope measurements worldwide. The laboratory has played
a significant role in developing, refining and communicating
analytical techniques for isotope measurement and maintains
an extensive analytical capability for isotope analysis used
in water resource management. The laboratory infrastructure
is continuously augmented to provide better services to the
Member States.
An important role of the IAEA is in
the preparation, certification and distribution of isotope
reference materials used to calibrate measurements in other
laboratories. The laboratory distributes IAEA standards for
over 40 isotope ratio measurements worldwide. In some cases,
the IAEA is the only source of such standards, for example,
VSMOW (Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water) for stable isotopes
of oxygen and hydrogen in water. Conducting inter-laboratory
comparisons on a regular basis provides participating laboratories
with the opportunity to evaluate the accuracy of their own
measurements.
