While the consequences of an attack utilizing a radiation dispersal device (RDD) would not be nearly as severe as those associated with an Improvised Nuclear Device (IND), the likelihood of an RDD attack by a terrorist organization is much higher. Because of this, there has been an effort to develop methods for age-dating radiological sealed sources in recent years. One such procedure, developed by Argonne National Laboratory, is used for determining the age of Sr-90 sources. Unfortunately, the procedure utilizes a rather expensive extraction chromatography resin and requires all measurement instrumentation to support radioactive material. The work presented investigates using an alternative separation scheme that not only utilizes a less costly resin, but also results in the isolation of Sr-90’s stable granddaughter, Zr-90. This allows the strontium quantification to be done radiometrically and removes the requirement for an ICP-MS that has seen radioactive material for zirconium quantification, increasing the number of instruments capable of making the measurement and making high throughput of samples much simpler.

Age dating of Sr-90 using DGA resin

254th National Meeting (2017)

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