Speaker
Mrs
Gabriela Wallova
(Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Vienna)
Description
Environmental monitoring of hazardous radionuclides is an important issue. 90Sr can be found in the environment due to the global fallout from atmospheric nuclear explosions and the Chernobyl accident in 1986. It is one of the most hazardous fission products due to its chemical similarity with calcium, because it can be accumulated in bone tissue delivering irradiation doses to the bone marrow.
210Pb is a naturally occurring radionuclide which also accumulates in bones. If these two nuclides are measured, a natural and an anthropogenic activity concentration can be compared for the respective samples. Deer bone samples were selected as a feasible environmental contamination indicator.
This work describes different procedures for the isolation of 90Sr and 210Pb from deer bones by anion exchange methods and their sequential measurement. The aim was to obtain pure 90Sr and 210Pb spectra in order to avoid spectrum deconvolution procedures.
To prevent collection of Pb on the Sr•Spec® resin we first separated Pb on a Dowex anion exchange column. Sr, which is not held back on the Dowex column, was then purified using Sr•Spec® resin: first Ca and the Ra isotopes were eluted with 3M HNO3 and then Sr was eluted with distilled water. With this two-step procedure of lead separation on Dowex followed by Sr purification on Sr•Spec®, pure 210Pb and 90Sr spectra can be achieved by liquid scintillation counting of the respective eluting solutions. The chemical yield of both steps was determined by ICP-MS. Our results of re-measured samples show satisfying agreement with data obtained by a modified Sr•Spec® method and also by the “classical” 90Sr determination using fuming nitric acid.
Primary author
Mrs
Gabriela Wallova
(Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Vienna)
Co-authors
Prof.
Gabriele Wallner
(Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Vienna)
Mr
Norbert Kandler
(Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Vienna)
