Development of the rapid preconcentration method for determination of actinides in large volume seawater sample using Actinide resin

A simple and rapid preconcentration method of actinide from seawater using Actinide resin was developed and tested with the seawater spiked with a known U and Th. The developed method of Actinide resin based on column chromatography is less time-consuming and requires less labor compared with a typical co-precipitation technique for preconcentration of actinides. U and Th, which are relatively weak-bonded with Actinide resin among actinides, were used to determine the optimum flow rate of seawater sample and evaluate the capacity of Actinide resin to concentrate actinides from seawater. A flow rate of 50 mL min^-1 was available with Actinide resin 2 mL (BV, bed volume). When 5 or 10 L of seawater containing U were loaded on Actinide resin (2 mL, BV) at 50 mL min^-1, the recovery of U was 93 % and 86 %, respectively. For extraction of actinides bound with Actinide resin, we compared three methods: solvent extraction, ashing-acid digestion, and ashing-microwave digestion. Ashing-microwave digestion method shows the best performance of which is the recovery of 100 % for U and 81 % for Th. For the preconcentration of actinides in 200 L of seawater, a typical coprecipitation method requires 2-3 days, but the developed method in this study is achieved the high recovery of actinides within 12 h.