Determination of 241 Am in Environmental Samples: A Review.

The determination of 241 Am in the environment is of importance in monitoring its release and assessing its environmental impact and radiological risk. This paper aims to give an overview about the recent developments and the state-of-art analytical methods for 241 Am determination in environmental samples. Thorough discussions are given in this paper covering a wide range of aspects, including sample pre-treatment and pre-concentration methods, chemical separation techniques, source preparation, radiometric and mass spectrometric measurement techniques, speciation analyses, and tracer applications. The paper focuses on some hyphenated separation methods based on different chromatographic resins, which have been developed to achieve high analytical efficiency and sample throughput for the determination of 241 Am. The performances of different radiometric and mass spectrometric measurement techniques for 241 Am are evaluated and compared. Tracer applications of 241 Am in the environment, including speciation analyses of 241 Am, and applications in nuclear forensics are also discussed.