A New Analytical Technique for the Characterisation of Radioactive Waste

New fast destructive methods for the determination of the radiological inventory in radioactive wastes have been developed. Ion Chromatographic system has been coupled to a Liquid Scintillation Counter. Analytical procedures have been qualified using standard solutions as well as high salt content solutions, spiked with several β-emitters hard to be measured by non-destructive analyses, along with other long half-life radionuclides. A validation of the methods have been performed on real radioactive wastes. From the results of the work, some protocols of analysis have been defined: they contain all information about operative conditions, field of applicability, chemical and radiochemical detection limits.