Determination of the 107Pd half-life

Precise measurements of atomic concentration and activity were performed in the same sample to determine the half-life of ¹⁰⁷Pd. A pure ¹⁰⁷Pd-containing solution was obtained after the dissolution and chemical purification of concretions formed in the equipment of a reprocessing plant. The concentration of ¹⁰⁷Pd in the solution was measured by Multi-Collector Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (MC-ICP-MS), associated with the isotope dilution technique. The activity of the solution was determined by Liquid Scintillation Counting (LSC) using both, the Triple to Double Coincidence Ratio (TDCR) and CIEMAT/NIST methods. These combined measurements resulted in a half-life of T_1/2 = (5.94 ± 0.07) × 10⁶ years with a coverage factor k of 1. The precision of the present measurement was improved by a factor of 2.5 in comparison to previous data.