Developments towards detection of 135Cs at VERA

Radioisotopes produced in natural or anthropogenic fission are widely used for tracer studies of environmental processes, in nuclear forensics, and are important for nuclear waste disposal. Besides the well-known 137Cs, the longer-lived sister isotope 135Cs (T1/2 = 2.3 Myr) is also produced, and the combined measurement of the two isotopes would allow for assessment of contaminating sources. The insufficient suppression of the stable isobar 135Ba presently prevents AMS measurements down to expected natural levels of 135Cs/133Cs ≈ 10−11. Via the difference in electron affinities between Cs and Ba further isobar suppression should be achievable after the installation of the Ion-Laser-Interaction System (ILIAS) at VERA. We present a preparatory study on the performance of the 3 MV VERA AMS facility for 135Cs concerning ion formation, transmission and detection. Since the usual Cs sputtering would obscure the 135Cs/133Cs ratio of a sample, Rb sputtering was successfully applied and tested also for various other typical AMS elements. Partial suppression of 135Ba is possible with the extraction of Cs− and negative Cs-fluorides. Cs− currents of several 10 nA were extracted over hours from mg amounts of Cs2SO4 material. The transmission to various charge states was tested with gas (Ar, He) and foil stripping. Experiments showed that no suppression in the detection system is possible at high beam energies with the VERA facility. For this reason, gas stripping to low charge states (2+, 3+) with transmissions up to 30% is favorable to guarantee optimal beam transport to the detector. In the present setup, utilizing a simple Bragg-type detector, the blank 135Cs/133Cs ratios from chemically pure samples are determined by the 135Ba background to a value of (4.0 ± 1.3)·10−9.