Development of HCl-free solid-phase extraction combined with ICP-MS/MS for rapid assessment of difficult-to-measure radionuclides. Part I: Selective measurement of 93Zr and 93Mo in concrete rubble

• Published in: Journal of radioanalytical and nuclear chemistry Vol. 327; no. 1; pp. 543 - 553
• Main Authors: Do, Van-Khoai, Furuse, Takahiro, Murakami, Erina, Aita, Rena, Ohta, Yuki, Sato, Soichi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 2021; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Assessments; Chemistry; Chemistry and Materials Science; Concrete; Decontamination; Diagnostic Radiology; Hadrons; Heavy Ions; Inorganic Chemistry; Nuclear Chemistry; Nuclear Physics; Physical Chemistry; Radioactivity; Radiochemical separation; Radioisotopes; Solid phases; Zirconium isotopes; Zr; Mo; ICP-MS/MS; Decommissioning waste; Difficult-to-measure radionuclides
• ISSN: 0236-5731; 1588-2780
• DOI: 10.1007/s10967-020-07503-z

A new HCl-free chromatographic separation procedure has been developed for sequential separation of Zr and Mo from concrete matrices for selective measurement of
93
Zr and
93
Mo by ICP-MS/MS. The recoveries of greater than 90% for Zr and Mo from concretes could be achieved. The measurement condition was optimized for complete suppression of interferences from
93
Nb and peak tailing from abundant isotopes of Zr and Mo in concrete matrices. The removal of interferences was verified by measurement of radio-contamination-free concretes used as a sample matrix blank. Method detection limits of 1.7 mBq g
− 1
and 0.2 Bq g
− 1
were achieved for, respectively,
93
Zr and
93
Mo in the concrete matrices. The interference removal factor for Nb (equivalent to the decontamination factor in radiochemical separation) was of the order of 10
5
, and the abundance sensitivity was of the order of 10
─8
, indicating that the developed method is reliable for verifying the presence of ultralow concentrations of
93
Zr and
93
Mo. The present method is suitable for the rapid assessment of
93
Zr and
93
Mo for radioactivity inventory of concrete rubble.