THE DETERMINATION OF 238Pu AND 242Cm IN AQUEOUS SOIL EXTRACTS

摘要

A method is described for the quantitative determination of 238Fu and 242 Cm contained in aqueous soil extracts. The organic matter is destroyed using standard wet ashing techniques. The 87.8-h 238 Pu and 163-d 242 Cm are isolated by co-extraction with iron and purified using cation exchange techniques. The final eluate is evaporated to dryness on stainless steel planchets and counted using an alpha spectrometer system in conjunction with a silicon surface barrier detector. Greater than 98 percent recovery of 238Pu and 242Cm was obtained from ammonium acetate and sodium hydroxide-nitric acid extracts of traced soil. The primary advantages of this method are: 1) secondary tracers are not needed for the determination of chemical yields, and 2) expensive and time consuming electrodeposition techniques are not required for final sample mounting.