Plutonium measurements on the 1 MV AMS system at the Centro Nacional de Aceleradores (CNA)

Plutonium isotopes have been recently added to the list of radionuclides that can be measured with the new generation of compact AMS facilities. In this paper we present first experimental results concerning the development of the plutonium AMS technique at 680 kV on the 1 MV AMS system at the Centro Nacional de Aceleradores (CNA) in Sevilla, Spain. This is the first compact AMS machine designed and manufactured by High Voltage Engineering Europa. As we demonstrate, the obtained backgrounds for Pu-239,Pu-240, of about 10(6) atoms, and the Pu-239/U-238 mass suppression factor, in the range of 10(-9), compare to the ones achieved on other AMS facilities. With the measurement of reference materials provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA-375, IAEA-Soil-6, IAEA-381) and samples already studied on the 600 kV compact ETH/PSI AMS system at Zurich, we show that the CNA system can be perfectly used for the routine measurement of plutonium isotopes at environmental levels. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.