Uranium comparison by means of AMS and ICP-MS and Pu and ¹³⁷Cs results around an Italian Nuclear Power Plant

Department of Nuclear Physics, Research School of Physics and Engineering, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia

^a corresponding author with present address: Italian Aerospace Research Centre - CIRA, via Maiorise, 81043 Capua (CE), Italy. Email: m.decesare@cira.it.

Published online: 6 April 2015

Abstract

Italy built and commissioned 4 nuclear power plants between 1958-1978, which delivered a total of 1500 MW. All four were closed down after the Chernobyl accident following a referendum in 1987. One of the plants was Garigliano, commissioned in 1959. This plant used a 160 MW BWR1 (SEU of 2.3 %) and was operational from 1964 to 1979, when it was switched off for maintenance. It was definitively stopped in 1982, and is presently being decommissioned. We report here details on the chemistry procedure and on the measurements for soil samples, collected up to 4.5 km from the Nuclear Plant. A comparison between uranium (²³⁸U) concentration as determined by means of AMS (Accelerator Mass Spectrometry) and by ICP-MS (Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry) techniques respectively at the ANU (Australian National University) and at the Ecowise company in Canberra, Australia, is reported, as well as ²³⁶U and ^239;240Pu concentration results detected by AMS. ²³⁶U/²³⁸U and ²⁴⁰Pu/²³⁹Pu isotopic ratios by means of AMS are also provided. A contamination from Chernobyl is visible in the ¹³⁷Cs/^239+240Pu activity ratio measurements.