Abstract
The present work is a part of a national project dedicated to establishing a marine radioactivity database for both natural and man-made radionuclides for the Saudi coasts of the Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea. Concentrations of Pu isotopes, Am-241, Sr-90, and Cs-137 radionuclides have been measured in marine sediment samples collected from 11 different locations at Al-Khafji, Mneefa and Aljobail coastal areas. Pu isotopes, Am-241, and Sr-90 were sequentially separated from all other components of the sample by anion exchange chromatography and prepared for counting. The alpha emitters were coprecipitated with Nd3+ as fluorides and mounted on a membrane filters for measurement by alpha spectroscopy while Sr-90 concentration was measured using liquid scintillation counting. Measurements of Cs-137 have been made using a hyper-pure germanium spectrometer. The activity concentrations of Pu-218, Pu239+240, Am-241, Sr-90, and Cs-137 for all measured samples were <0.02 - 0.094, 0.05 - 0.51, 0.09 - 0.38, 0.76 - 4.13, and 0.17- 9.79 Bq/kg dry weight respectively. Results are discussed and compared with other reported data.