Europium nuclides

Therefore, the preliminary investigation described herein examined several aspects of the behavior of the equilibrium distribution coefficients for the sorption of rubidium, cesium, strontium, barium, silver, cadmium, cerium, promethium, europium, and gadolinium from aqueous sodium chloride solutions. These solutions initially contained one and only one of the nuclides of interest. For the nuclides selected, values of Kp were then... 

For the nuclides studied (rubidium, cesium, strontium, bariun silver, cadmium, cerium, promethium, europium, and gadolinium) the distribution coefficients generally vary from about 10 ml/gm at solution-phase concentrations on the order of 10 mg-atom/ml to 10 and greater at concentrations on the order of 10 and less. These results are encouraging with regard to the sediment being able to provide a barrier to migration of nuclides away from a waste form and also appear to be reasonably consistent with related data for similar oceanic sediments and related clay minerals found within the continental United States. 

Using the Chart of the Nuclides as a guide, estimate the sensitivity (minimum quantity that can be detected) of neutron activation analysis for europium using a thermal neutron flux of 3 x 1012 n/cm2-s. Assume no irradiation may last more than 1 h and the minimum detectable activity is 10 dpm. 

Even though the Mossbauer effect has been observed for almost 50 different elements and ca. 100 different nuclides, only a few of these elements are widely used as Mossbauer effect probes. The nuclides which are both experimentally viable and yield useful chemical information are iron-57, tin-119, antimony-121, and europium-151. More difficult to use but of importance in coordination chemistry are gold-197, nickel-61, ruthenium-99, tellurium-125, iodine-129, dysprosium-161, tungsten-182, and neptunium-237. Among these isotopes, iron-57 is by far the easiest, most informative, and most widely used nuclide in both traditional coordination chemistry and in studies of biologically significant coordination complexes. 

Because of the high radiotoxicity of most of the actinide nuclides, only very limited studies of the biokinetics of plutonium and other important actinides are possible in human volunteers. As our information about the long-term retention of actinides is limited, there is interest in the possible use of stable lanthanide elements as surrogates for the actinides for long-term biokinetic studies in humans. The aim of such studies is to inject appropriate stable isotopes of lanthanides such as cerium, europium, and gadolinium into human volunteers and then to measure the excretion of the lanthanide in urine and faeces by mass spectrometry, charged-particle activation analysis or similar methods. Also, limited human studies can also be carried out using small doses of appropriate lanthanide radionuclides (Bailey 1989). 

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