Determination of plutonium isotopes in seawater reference materials using isotope-dilution ICP-MS

Abstract

We analyzed the activities of (239)Pu, (240)Pu, (239+240)Pu, (241)Pu, the ratio of number of atoms (atom ratio) for (240)Pu/(239)Pu, and the activity ratio of (241)Pu/(239+240)Pu in seawater reference materials, IAEA-443 and IAEA-381, using a highly sensitive isotope dilution sector field inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry method. With a mean chemical yield of 65% determined with (242)Pu as a tracer, we found that the experimentally established values in IAEA-443 for (239)Pu, (240)Pu, (241)Pu and (239+240)Pu activities are almost the same as those in IAEA-381. Regarding the (239+240)Pu activity, we provided the most precise and accurate result among the twelve laboratories, which participated in the interlaboratory comparison. In addition, for the (240)Pu/(239)Pu atom ratio, our results for IAEA-381 (0.2315±0.0008) and IAEA-443 (0.2325±0.0008) are in good agreement with the IAEA information value (0.229±0.006), but have much smaller uncertainty. Since the new seawater reference material, IAEA-443, is commercially available, it can be used not only for method validation for seawater plutonium isotope ratio and activity analysis, but also for more general use as a plutonium isotope standard for mass discrimination correction for other environmental samples.