Application of an Ion Exchange Method for Sensitivity Improvement of an Automated Radionuclide Analysis System

A high sensitivity radionuclide analysis system has been developed. An automated system employs an ion exchange method to concentrate target nuclides in reactor coolant water. The system consists of sample treatment equipment and an automatic sample changer in conjunction with a multichannel gamma-ray spectrum analyzer. The sample treatment equipment performs sampling, filtration, sample volume selection, and ion exchange. These four processes are fully automated. Performance tests show that the lowest analysis level is 10^-6 μCi/ml of ¹³¹I within 10% reproducibility. The processing time from sampling to ion exchange is within 10 min for samples <100 ml.