Determination of 89,90Sr in seawater

The development of new chromatographic methods for separation of strontium from calcium and other elements as well as the development of LSC instrumentation which allows quick and simple detection has substantially simplified and shortened the time required for strontium determination. Seawater is a complex mixture of large amount of different kinds of salts (especially sodium, magnesium and calcium salts) and there is a problem of simple and quick isolation of small amounts of strontium. Determination of low 89,90Sr activity in seawater requires great amounts of water (up to 200 L), which is a problem in developing the method. Seawater contains approximately 8 mg/L of dissolved strontium. Therefore, more than 100 mg of strontium will be isolated from the above volume of water. This quantity practically hinders determination of 89,90Sr with gas proportional counter because of the self-absorption effect. This paper describes a new method for determining 89,90Sr in seawater samples, the possibility to isolate strontium and yttrium from large amounts of sample using chromatographic methods and the application of Cherenkov counting for simultaneous determination of 89,90Sr.(author)