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SYAR: Symposium The state of the art in actinide research

SYAR 1: The state of the art in actinide research

SYAR 1.3: Hauptvortrag

Mittwoch, 22. September 2021, 11:45–12:15, Audimax

Pushing the Limits: Detection of Long-Lived Actinides at VERA — •Karin Hain¹, Michael Kern¹, Jixin Qiao², Francesca Quinto³, Aya Sakaguchi⁴, Peter Steier¹, Gabriele Wallner¹, Andreas Wiederin¹, Akihiko Yokoyama⁵, and Robin Golser¹ — ¹University of Vienna, Faculty of Physics, Austria — ²Technical University of Denmark, Denmark — ³Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany — ⁴University of Tsukuba, Japan — ⁵Kanazawa University, Japan

Long-lived actinides, e.g. ²³⁶U, ²³⁷Np, ^239,240Pu, ²⁴¹Am can be measured largely background-free by Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) so that the minimum sample size is basically limited by the detection efficiency including chemical sample preparation, which, compared to other AMS nuclides, is rather low for actinides (around 10⁻⁴). Recent experiments at the Vienna Environmental Research Accelerator (VERA) laboratory indicate an increase of the negative ion yield of uranium by one order of magnitude by using fluoride compounds and a modified sample preparation. In combination with previous modifications to the setup and measurement procedure, this will result in an increase of detection efficiency by almost a factor 100. This improvement is especially important for the analysis of the ²³³U/²³⁶U ratio which has the potential to become a novel sensitive fingerprint for releases from nuclear industry. This talk will give an overview of the recent improvements in actinide detection at VERA and of on-going projects like the production of an isotopic Np spike or on the respective applications, like the retrospective analysis of actinides in lungs or on aerosols.