Natural Uranium Radioactivity Solution Standard: SRM 4321d

A new natural uranium solution standard has been produced and will be disseminated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as Standard Reference Material 4321d. The standard is certified for the massic activities of ²³⁴U, ²³⁵U, and ²³⁸U in solution, and it is based on isotopic mass data for the metallic Certified Reference Material (CRM) 112-A (originally issued as SRM 960) that was obtained from THE U.S. Department of Energy, New Brunswick Laboratory. The metallic CRM was chemically cleaned, dissolved, and gravimetrically diluted to prepare a master solution, which was quantitatively dispensed into 5 mL aliquots that were contained within flame-sealed glass ampoules for each SRM unit. Homogeneity among SRM units, verifying solution homogeneity, was substantiated by photonic-emission integral counting with a NaI(Tl) well counter. Confirmatory measurements were performed by liquid scintillation counting for the total massic activity, and by isotope dilution α spectrometry for the ²³⁴U and ²³⁸U massic activities.