A NEW APPROACH TO RADIONUCLIDE ANALYSIS IN GROUNDWATERS

A method using liquid scintillation spectral analysis (LSSA) for analyzing mixtures of radionuclides in groundwater samples, which is fast, simple, and inexpensive, was developed and bench-tested. Samples can be measured in a field laboratory with a new commercial portable liquid scintillation instrument that provides advanced analysis, display, and computational features previously found only in large expensive laboratory models. Results can be available within hours from the time samples are collected. The analysis provides a good measure of total sample activity and a spectral index value that may detect changes in radionuclide distributions from previous analyses when counting statistic are adequate. If a sample shows no change, further analytical costs for it may be avoided. A method that rapidly and quantitatively concentrates very low levels of activity from liter-size samples in minutes was also tested. With some modest improvements in this step, this work offers a completely new methodology and approach to groundwater remediation, which can dramatically reduce analytical costs and speed monitored cleanup and closure in many types of radiological work programs