Rapid and non-destructive determination of uranium and thorium by gamma spectrometry and a comparison with ICP-AES

Abstract

A rapid, simple and non-destructive method was developed for the determination of thorium, uranium by gamma ray spectrometry (high purity Ge detector) in thorium–uranium mixture. Using the calibration curves, thorium and uranium were analyzed in synthetic samples with RSD ~2 %. Inter element effect suggested that 583 and 185.7 keV gamma lines are more suitable for the determination of Th and U, respectively in a mixture of Th–U. The newly developed method was validated by routinely employed method using synthetic samples. An ICP-AES based method was developed for the determination of uranium and thorium for comparison purpose.