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.