Determination of polonium in aqueous media with the use of metal-containing membranes

A possibility to develop a rapid technique of polonium determination, using porous reactive membranes impregnated by silver copper and bismuth for its isolation, was studied. The developed technique of polonium determination compares favourably with conventional ones, since it has a number of considerable advantages: the time of isolation is reduced by a factor of 10-50 with detection limit decrease by a factor of 50-80, as compared with the Flinn technique. The lower detection limit for the sample volume of 4 dm3 and membrane diameter of 35 is 1.5x10-3 Bq/dm3. The technique ensures the measurement of activity using alpha-radiometer fit out with the BDIA-01 type detection unit with the error not exceeding 30% and confidential probability of 0.95