Determination of Radionuclides in Chemical Reagents by Low-background .GAMMA.-Ray Spectrometry and Application of the Coprecipitation Method to Seawater Sample

Abstract

Extremely low-background γ-ray spectrometry is applied to the determination of blank levels of nuclides (7Be, 60Co, 134Cs, 137Cs, 210Pb, 226Ra, 228Ra and 234Th) in various chemical reagents and carriers, including Ba and Pb chemicals, BaSO4 from natural barite, contrast media for medical use, and Pb in an old roof tile. Barite shows less contamination with 226Ra compared with the Ba chemicals (6 - 90 mBq/g-Ba in Ba reagents, 0.7 -1.5 mBq/g-Ba in barite) . 210Pb contamination is notable in all Pb reagents, but not in the roof tile. In CsCl reagent, 134Cs, 137Cs and 234Th (238U) are found to be negligible. Using the least-contaminated carrier reagents, the coprecipitation method is successfully employed to the simultaneous measurement of low-level activities of these nuclides in seawater sample.