Radiation measurement for safeguards environmental samples by imaging plate

Yasuda, Kenichiro   ; Sakurai, Satoshi ; Gunji, Hideho; Usuda, Shigekazu

In order to contribute to the strengthened safeguards system based on the Program 93+2 of the IAEA, Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI) constructed the CLEAR facility (Clean Laboratory for Environmental Analysis and Research) and is developing analytical technology for ultra trace amounts of nuclear materials in environmental samples. To avoid cross-contamination among the samples and contamination of the clean rooms, radioactive materials in the samples to be introduced into the CLEAR facility will be limited to a certain amount. For this purpose the authors have examined the feasibility of Imaging-plate method, which is a kind of autoradiography and is suitable for determination on distribution of low-level radioactivity in the samples. Preliminary examination with -ray (K-40), the linearity was obtained in the range of 0.01 - 0.2 Bq. The experiments with -ray (Sm-147) suggested the detection limit of 0.01 Bq, which was equivalent to 2 g of natural uranium. At the presentation, the results on actual environmental samples will be reported.