Background understanding and improvement in NaI scintillators

Sodium Iodide scintillators are very interesting particle and radiation detectors. Low background requirements could limit their application in a variety of fields. We report the e.orts to understand and reduce the background in a set of 14 NaI detectors, stored underground since 1988, undertaken in the frame of the ANAIS experiment [1] in several directions, including PSD techniques, Monte Carlo simulations and detector upgrading.