A preliminary study on the use of (10)Be in forensic radioecology of nuclear explosion sites

IUPAC Periodic Table of the Elements and Isotopes (IPTEI) for the Education Community (IUPAC Technical Report)

The IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry) Periodic Table of the Elements and Isotopes (IPTEI) was created to familiarize students, teachers, and non-professionals with the existence and importance of isotopes of the chemical elements. The IPTEI is modeled on the familiar Periodic Table of the Chemical Elements. The IPTEI is intended to hang on the walls of chemistry laboratories and classrooms. Each cell of the IPTEI provides the chemical name, symbol, atomic number, and standard atomic weight of an element. Color-coded pie charts in each element cell display the stable isotopes and the relatively long-lived radioactive isotopes having characteristic terrestrial isotopic compositions that determine the standard atomic weight of each element. The background color scheme of cells categorizes the 118 elements into four groups: (1) white indicates the element has no standard atomic weight, (2) blue indicates the element has only one isotope that is used to determine its standard atomic weight, which is given as a single value with an uncertainty, (3) yellow indicates the element has two or more isotopes that are used to determine its standard atomic weight, which is given as a single value with an uncertainty, and (4) pink indicates the element has a well-documented variation in its atomic weight, and the standard atomic weight is expressed as an interval. An element-by-element review accompanies the IPTEI and includes a chart of all known stable and radioactive isotopes for each element. Practical applications of isotopic measurements and technologies are included for the following fields: forensic science, geochronology, Earth-system sciences, environmental science, and human health sciences, including medical diagnosis and treatment.

41Ca, 14C and 10Be concentrations in coral sand from the Bikini atoll

Activation measurements of materials exposed to nuclear bomb explosions are widely used to reconstruct the neutron flux for retrospective dosimetry. In this study the applicability of coral CaCO3 as a biogenic neutron fluence dosimeter is tested. The long-lived radioisotopes (41)Ca, (14)C and (10)Be, which had been produced in nuclear bomb explosions, are measured in several coral sand samples from the Bikini atoll at the 600 kV and 200 kV AMS facilities of ETH Zurich. Elevated concentrations of all studied isotopes are found in a sample from the crater that was initially formed by the high-yield nuclear explosion Castle Bravo in 1954 and that had been used as site for several tests afterward. The observed (14)C concentration is considered too large to originate from neutron irradiation of CaCO3 alone. The relatively low concentration of (10)Be found in the crater sample indicates that production of (10)Be during nuclear bomb testing is generally minor. A simple neutron fluence reconstruction is performed on basis of the (41)Ca/(40)Ca ratio.