Determination of iodine-129 at natural levels using neutron activation and isotopic separation

Iodine-129 levels have been published for biological matrices that naturally accumulate iodine such as animal thyroid and kelp. However, published procedures have insufficient sensitivity to determine 129I in other environmental and biological species. A unique procedure has been developed for the determination of 129I which couples neutron activation with mass separation. The procedure results in a significant improvement in sensitivity, thus allowing analyses to be performed on a variety of matrices which heretofore had not been investigated. Method development and analytical procedures are presented and analytical results at the 10-13 - 10-14 gram 129I level are given. (U.S.)