Simple Method for Depleted Uranium Determination

When the issue of depleted uranium (DU) presence in the environment emerged, methods for analytical discrimination of DU against natural uranium should be developed. We present here a simple gamma-spectrometric method, based on the 238U–226Ra activity (non) equilibrium. The detection limit of the method for DU is of the order of magnitude of 10 Bq/kg (for about 50 ks counting), thus the method is appropriate for the determination of small amounts (≈100 Bq/kg) of DU in environmental samples. The method is tested on about 90 soil samples.