Abstract:
There is a growing demand for the determination of Pu, Np, Am and Cm in environmental and biological samples in fields of environmental radioactivity monitoring, radiation protection, nuclear forensics and nuclear emergency preparedness. A reliable and efficient method based on TEVA+UTEVA+DGA chromatography separation has been developed for simultaneous determination of these radionuclides in water samples. Hydrous titanium oxide(HTO) was used to pre-concentrate the analyte nuclides, then the TEVA column of stacked extraction chromatographic columns was used to retain Pu and Np, and Am, Cm were separated together with the DGA resin. Alpha emitting isotopes
239+240Pu,
238Pu,
237Np,
241Am,
243+244Cm were determined by alpha spectrometry after CeF
3 microprecipitation, while beta emitters
241Pu was determined by liquid scintillation(LS) counter. The overall recoveries of these nuclides for the entire procedure indicated by
236Pu and
234Am are higher than 80%. Spiked samples along were analyzed to evaluate the performance of the method. The measured results agree very well with the expected values for all the spike samples. With 48 h of counting, the minimal detectable activities(MDAs) are found to be 0.40 mBq for
241Am, 0.33 mBq for
243+244Cm, 0.72 mBq for
238Pu, 0.44 mBq for
239+240Pu, 0.72 mBq for
237Np by alpha spectrometry; and 0.17 Bq for
241Pu with a counting time of 1 800 s by liquid scintillation counter. Using vacuum box technique for batch processing, it can reduce the sample preparation time. The time required for analysis of a batch of 12 samples is less than 3 h. This method can provide high sample analysis throughput, quick analysis turn around time for cost and time saving.