Due to the man-made production of 93Mo in nuclear facilities, the result leads to significantly increased precision for modelling the low-level nuclear waste composition. This value is a factor of 8 more precise than previous estimations. The probability that the 93Mo decays to the metastable state 93mNb was determined to be 95.7(16)%. The half-life of 93Mo was deduced to be 4839(63) years, which is more than 20% longer than the currently adopted value, whereas the relative uncertainty could be reduced by a factor of 15.
A 93Mo sample of high purity was obtained from proton irradiated niobium by chemical separation of molybdenum with a decontamination factor larger than 1.6 × 10 14 with respect to Nb.
The measurement is a combination of high-resolution mass spectrometry for the determination of the 93Mo concentration and liquid scintillation counting for determining the specific activity. This work presents the first direct measurement of the 93Mo half-life.
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