Mercury determination by neutron activation analysis

Natural mercury or mercury as an activated product is a part of environmental burdens. Its stable isotopes can be found for example in soil or water, so it is important to know and select proper method to determine them. The aim of this work was to carry out experiments to determine under what conditions and in what amounts it is possible to determine mercury by neutron activation analysis, which has been chemically purified and separated. It is NAA that could be the method to replace other methods of determining mercury using mass spectrometry. From the stable isotopes of mercury for the NAA method, two isotopes of mercury - ¹⁹⁶Hg and ²⁰²Hg which were activated by neutrons to ¹⁹⁷Hg and ²⁰³Hg were selected due to their activation time and character of the emitted radiation. (authors)