Abstract
This work presents the first direct measurement of the 93Mo half-life. The measurement is a combination of high-resolution mass spectrometry for the determination of the 93Mo concentration and liquid scintillation counting for determining the specific activity. A 93Mo sample of high purity was obtained from proton irradiated niobium by chemical separation of molybdenum with a decontamination factor larger than 1.6 × 1014 with respect to Nb. The half-life of 93Mo was deduced to be 4839(63) years, which is more than 20% longer than the currently adopted value, whereas the relative uncertainty could be reduced by a factor of 15. The probability that the 93Mo decays to the metastable state 93mNb was determined to be 95.7(16)%. This value is a factor of 8 more precise than previous estimations. Due to the man-made production of 93Mo in nuclear facilities, the result leads to significantly increased precision for modelling the low-level nuclear waste composition. The presented work demonstrates the importance of chemical separations in combination with state-of-the-art analysis techniques, which are inevitable for precise and accurate determinations of nuclear decay data.
Highlights
This work presents the first direct measurement of the 93Mo half-life
Despite the seeming simplicity of the involved techniques, the half-lives of a significant number of not so rare radioisotopes are still insufficiently constrained; sometimes because isobaric impurities hamper quantifying the number of atoms or because the pure radioisotope is hard to obtain in sufficient amounts for precise measurements
In this work we demonstrate the power of state of art chemical separations combined with modern instrumentation to determine the nuclear properties of radionuclides with very high precision
Summary
This work presents the first direct measurement of the 93Mo half-life. The measurement is a combination of high-resolution mass spectrometry for the determination of the 93Mo concentration and liquid scintillation counting for determining the specific activity. Often, when the half-life is not too long, it can be determined by means of repeat measurements.
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