Rapid determination of 90 Sr from 90 Y in seawater

A rapid method for indirect determination of 90Sr from its progeny 90Y in seawater was developed. The method employed a fast and effective two-step co-precipitation followed by separation of Sr/Y using extraction chromatography. The novel co-precipitation technique removed excessive dominant salts of seawater and enabled sequential measurement of 90Y by both Cerenkov counting and liquid scintillation assay (LSA). Mean chemical recovery was 88 ± 7 %. Sample preparation time was estimated to be <4 h for a set of ten samples. The minimum detectable concentration of 90Y measured by Cerenkov counting and LSA techniques were 0.11 and 0.18 Bq L−1, respectively, for 1 L seawater and 1 h counting time on a Hidex liquid scintillation counter. Method performance evaluation demonstrated excellent results.