First application of Actinide Resin in the preparation of water samples for multi-actinide analysis with accelerator mass spectrometry

Abstract

A novel sample preparation procedure for highly sensitive concurrent analysis of ²³⁶U, ²³⁷Np, ²³⁹Pu and ²⁴⁰Pu from river and sea water samples with Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) was developed. A selective extraction chromatography resin, instead of Fe(OH)₃ co-precipitation, is used to separate the actinides as a group from most of the matrix elements for “multi-actinide analysis” with AMS, as previously published [Quinto et al., Analytical Chemistry, 2015, 253, 451–458]. The new extraction method has been tested on two environmental water systems, which differ substantially in terms of salinity, namely, 2 L Rhine river water samples collected in the vicinity of the Fessenheim Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) and 250 mL surface sea water samples from the vicinity of the La Hague nuclear reprocessing plant (NRP). In addition, aliquots from the CRM IAEA-443 (Irish Sea water) are analysed for method validation. It is observed that extraction chromatography yields results that are consistent with the use of Fe(OH)₃ co-precipitation for multi-actinide analysis and can increase the signal count rates of the AMS detector for sample systems where co-precipitation would concurrently precipitate significant amounts of sample matrix, diluting the analytes in the final AMS target material. The novel method can be applied to ultra-trace analysis of low-volume samples, such as environmental samples contaminated by global fallout and nuclear installations.