SLOWPOKE Reactor Facility

Samples (156) were taken from 54 reference lithic pieces that represented five rock types. These samples were analyzed at the SLOWPOKE Reactor Facility of the University of Toronto. They were irradiated for 1 min at 2 kW, or for 1 or 2 min at 5 kW (depending on their radioactivity level in preliminary tests). Upon removal from the reactor, the samples, which weighed between 0.1 and 0.3 g, were left to decay for 18 min and were counted for 5 min with a Ge(Li) y-ray detector coupled to a multichannel analyzer. Trace element concentrations were calculated with the comparator method (7). The 15 elements examined were barium, titanium, sodium, aluminum, potassium, manganese, calcium, uranium, dysprosium, strontium, bromine, vanadium, chlorine, magnesium, and silicon. The first seven of these elements were the most useful in the differentiation of major rock types. 

The authors thank Cathy D Andrea and Debbie Ross for their undaunting assistance in this work. The study was partially funded by a grant from the SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) and the analysis was made possible through an infrastructure grant to the SLOWPOKE Reactor Facility at the University of Toronto, Canada. 

SLOWPOKE Reactor Facility and the Department of Chemical Engineering, and Applied Chemistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, M5S IA4... 

Faculty of Science, Cairo University, Giza, Egypt department of Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry, and the SLOWPOKE Reactor Facility and the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A4 department of Chemistry, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22901... 

Metropolitan Museum of Art, 419 Miami University, 265 National Center for Health Statistic, 465 New York University, 265 North Carolina State University, 429 Northern Arizona University, 125 Northwestern University, 381 Ohio State University, 451, 465 SLOWPOKE Reactor Facility, 21,113, 337 Smithsonian Institution, 57, 87,419 Texas A M University, 145 University of Auckland, 21 University of California at Berkeley, 381, 465... 

Two hundred and ninety drawn glass beads and fragments of varying colour, structure (flashed, cored and uncored), sizes, and shapes from site Asd/KglO were analyzed non-destructively using instrumental neutron activation analysis at the SLOWPOKE Reactor Facility of the University of Toronto. These beads had to be neutron-irradiated as little as possible in order to minimize the build-up of radioactivity from Sb (half-life 2.75 days) and from Sb (half-life 60.9 days) in the Sb-rich beads, so that they could be returned to their owners within a reasonable amount of time. 

To attempt to sort out some of these issues with sourcing native copper, Ron Hancock and colleagues at the SLOWPOKE nuclear reactor facility at the University of Toronto decided to use the multielement capability of neutron-activation analysis. They started with 43 samples from 19 collections of native copper and 23 samples of copper from archaeological contexts but which were believed to be reworked metal of European origin. Eive other samples of copper from artifacts from known contexts but of unknown source were also included. To maximize the possibility that the provenience postulate would be true, they included 27 elements in their analytical procedure and got useful data for 22 of them. They also analyzed 14 subsamples from the same specimen to assess within sample variation and three modem copper samples for comparison. 

Marty McGuire tends to a Slowpoke reactor in the pool facility at Tunney s Pasture in May 1971. Most of these small reactors were sold to universities where they were used far research and teaching purposes. 

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