Improvements on the method for determining of 210Pb and 210Po in lead

An improved method is proposed to determine the content of Pb-210 in lead using Po-210 measured by alpha-ray spectrometry. This improved method, which is based on radiochemical separation by DDTC-toluene extraction, employs EDTA and citrate as masking reagents for the lead ions. To selectively extract polonium from an alkaline solution, the pH dependency was examined using a liquid scintillation counting method. And pH 9 was chosen as an extraction condition. Then Po-210 was electrodeposited on a stainless steel disk, and the chemical recovery was followed by Po-209 tracer. The effectiveness of the new method was validated by the agreement with the analytical results from five samples as determined by gamma-ray spectrometry.