Determination of plutonium in aqueous waste streams of the Juelich Research Center

A procedure has been developed for the determination of Pu in aqueous waste streams of low specific radioactivity. The procedure comprises evaporation of the liquid to dryness, destruction of organic compounds with fuming HClO4, valency adjustment of Pu, extraction of Pu(IV) into TOA/Heptane, stripping with 1 M (NH4)2SO4, and measurements using scintillation and α-spectrometric techniques. The accuracy of the procedure depends on the yield of the Pu separation and the Pu counting rate and amounts to 5% for Pu-239/40 and 10% for Pu-241, assuming a specific activity of 50 Bq/g Total Solid Residue. The sensitivity lies at about 5 10-4 Bq Pu-239/g TSR and 0.4 Bq Pu-241/g TSR. (orig.)