Radioactive materials overview

This chapter is an overview of what magnetic nuclear relaxation can bring to our knowledge of the actinide ions and their use in the nuclear industry. Most results are quite recent and the field is wide open. The author hopes this chapter will attract the attention of NMR specialists who should not be distraught by the experimental difficulties that always accompany the handling of radioactive materials. On the other hand, nuclear chemists and physicists will hopefully discover that NMRD is an interesting supplement to their favorite spectroscopic techniques. 

The chapter starts with an overview of the nature of major sites of radioactive environmental contamination. A brief summary of the health effects associated with exposure to ionizing radiation and radioactive materials follows. The remainder of the chapter summarizes current knowledge of the properties of radionuclides as obtained and applied in three interacting spheres... 

The sampling locations should be selected to give an overview of the entire vicinity of a facility from which radioactive material has accidentally... 

This report describes the degradation of concrete stmctures, that is, mainly stmctures over thousand years and about ten thousand years old with a history longer than that of Portland cement, due to soft water. In the underwater environment of radioactive waste repositories especially, as shown in Fig. 1, cement hydrates leach into the groundwater. An overview of the methods to predict degradation and methods to suppress degradation, with the focus on the phenomenon of degradation of cementitious material, is described here. 

Radioactive IRMs are not considered separately. A list of the radioactive IRMs available is displayed in Table 6.3 to provide the reader with an overview. So far as IDMS applications or isotopic variations in Nature are concerned, they involve stable materials. IRMs for nuclear applications, especially those from IRMM, are of excellent quality and fulfill the needs of the users. Therefore, there is no strong need at present for further or better IRMs for use in this context. 

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