engleski

Determination of low-level radiostrontium activities in natural samples

Strontium isotope 90Sr belongs to the group of isotopes, which are very dangerous for human health. Therefore 90Sr being determined usually in natural samples as soil, drinking water, etc. When determining 90Sr in natural samples it is necessary to isolate 90Sr from sample because 90Sr is pure beta emitter. As these samples contains much more other elements (sodium, calcium, iron, etc.) than strontium, it is necessary to isolate a small quantity of strontium from sample with simultaneous separation of other interfering elements. For this purpose an elegant method based on chromatographic techniques has been developed. Radioactive strontium is isolated from natural samples and separated from calcium, sodium, potassium, caesium, iron and some other elements on chromatographic columns filled with strong base anion exchanger and Sr.spec resin. Application of this technique eliminates most of the problems with regard to chemical isolation that are present in the standard procedure. On the other hand, liquid scintillation spectrometers with a very low level background (TRI CARB 2770 TR/SL, QUANTULUS) allowing the determination of low level activities. A combination of these techniques enables the creation of relatively simple and rapid procedures for the determination of low level activities of radioactive strontium. Therefore the whole determination procedures will be presented. Particularly, a possibility of determination very low level activities by combination of Cherenkov counting and classical scintillation spectrometry will be considered.

radiostrontium; low-level activities; natural samples

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