Field analyses of 238U and 226Ra in two uranium mill tailings piles from Niger using portable HPGe detector

The radioactivities of 238U and 226Ra in mill tailings from the U mines of COMINAK and SOMAÏR in Niger were measured and quantified using a portable High-Purity Germanium (HPGe) detector. The 238U and 226Ra activities were measured under field conditions on drilling cores with 600s measurements and without any sample preparation. Field results were compared with those obtained by Inductive Coupled Plasma Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-AES) and emanometry techniques. This comparison indicates that gamma-ray absorption by such geological samples does not cause significant deviations. This work shows the feasibility of using portable HPGe detector in the field as a preliminary method to observe variations of radionuclides concentration with the aim of identifying samples of interest. The HPGe is particularly useful for samples with strong secular disequilibrium such as mill tailings.