Determination of 135Cs concentration and 135Cs/137Cs ratio in waste samples from nuclear decommissioning by chemical separation and ICP-MS/MS

Atomic spectrometry update: review of advances in the analysis of metals, chemicals and materials

“…290 In this work the instrument was tted with three electron multipliers and three Daly detectors, which allowed four isotopic signals to be monitored in any combination, and high-time resolution ampliers which allowed dwell times as short as 10 ms to be used to monitor the four Pt isotopes, m/z 194, 196, 197 and 198. Data presented for the 195 Pt : 194 Pt isotope ratio, which is naturally close to unity thus minimising the effects of mass bias, was always in agreement with, but lower than, the natural ratio. The uncertainties (2 SD) on the isotope ratios were 35% for 30 nm NPs, 17% for 50 nm NPs and 10% for 70 nm NPs with the precision obtained presumably improving due to the increasing ion signal with increasing NPs size for a given particle number concentration.…”

“…In single quadrupole mode, numerous possibilities were identied over the mass range 227-239. The full list was tabulated, however the most important were: 194 Scanning at a higher mass range (227-270 a.m.u.) showed that higher oxides of matrix elements did not form or, if they did, they did not interfere with the analytes.…”

“…Long-lived 135 Cs and 135 Cs/ 137 Cs isotopic ratios for source identication were measured using ICP-MS/MS in different waste samples (steel, zirconium alloy, reactor coolant, ion exchange lter paper and spent ion exchange resin) by Zhu et al 194 A multi-stage separation scheme achieved decontamination factors ranging from 2.1 Â 10 5 (Sn) to 7 Â 10 5 (Co). Yields of greater than 85% and a 135 Cs detection limit of 3.1 Â 10 À14 g g À1 for 0.2 g stainless steel or spent resin were obtained.…”

“…The measured sizes for 30 and 50 nm Pt NPs were 30 nm AE 3 nm and 47 nm AE 5 nm which was in agreement with the data acquired by TEM. The authors suggested that the effect of dead time correction can account for part of discrepancy in the measured 195 Pt : 194 Pt ratio from the natural value. The dead time correction factor was calculated using a solution of dissolved Pt and it may be that alternatives to this, using NPs, needs investigating.…”

Determination of low-level 135Cs and 135Cs/137Cs atomic ratios in large volume of seawater by chemical separation coupled with triple-quadrupole inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry measurement for its oceanographic applications

“…While, this ratio decreases with increased neutron flux after a long-time neutron irradiation in a nuclear reactor because of the extremely large neutron capture cross section of 135 Xe, which is a decay precursor of 135 Cs in the fission production from nuclear fuel, causing a reduced yield of 135 Cs. The 135 Cs/ 137 Cs atomic ratio as low as 0.12 was observed in the high neutron flux reactor derived samples [19].…”