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Radiochemical separation of mostly short-lived neutron activation products

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Abstract

It is demonstrated that radiochemical separation in neutron activation analysis (RNAA) is usually the most effective means of optimization of the technique for many elements, if achieving the lowest detection limits and uncertainties are required. Examples are provided for low-level determination of vanadium, iodine, manganese, silicon, mercury, selenium in mostly biological materials. Further, it is also shown that RNAA is a superior tool for the low-level determination of natural radionuclides 232Th and 238U in shielding and construction materials for underground physics experiments on rare nuclear events, such as the search for neutrinoless double β-decay in SuperNEMO experiment.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Czech Science Foundation, Grant P108/12/G108.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nuclear Physics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, 25068 Husinec-Řež 130, Prague, Czech Republic

    Jan Kučera & Jan Kameník

  2. Department of Nuclear Physics and Biophysics, Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University, 84248, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Pavel P. Povinec

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  1. Jan Kučera
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  2. Jan Kameník
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  3. Pavel P. Povinec
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Correspondence to Jan Kučera.

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Kučera, J., Kameník, J. & Povinec, P.P. Radiochemical separation of mostly short-lived neutron activation products. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 311, 1299–1307 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-016-4930-2

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