Institute for Nuclear Research

Radiocarbon dating and environmental research

	Supervisor	Dr. Mihály Molnár
Email address	molnar.mihaly[~S+P-Á-M]atomki.hu
Research area	Environmental physics
Participants in the research work	Dr. Botond Buró Dr. Róbert Janovics Dr. István Major Dr. László Rinyu Dr. Katalin Tóth-Hubay Dr. Tamás Varga
Equipments	Gyorsítós tömegspektrométer (EnvironMICADAS) Gas proportional counter system
Publications	Developments and results from the new Hungarian graphite target line. Development of an automatic sampling unit for measuring radiocarbon content of groundwater. Status report of the new AMS C-14 sample preparation lab. of the Hertelendi Laboratory of Environmental Studies, Debrecen, Hungary. EnvironMICADAS a mini C-14 AMS with enhanced gas ion source interface in Hertelendi Laboratory of Environmental Studies, Debrecen, Hungary. Application of zinc sealed tube graphitization on sub-milligram samples using EnvironMICADAS.

Abstract

Mass Spectrometer and the associated new sample preparation laboratory was installed to our Laboratory in July of 2011.

Description

Radiocarbon measurements has a long tradition in the HEKAL laboratory since 1980. A counter system for high-precision C¹⁴ dating with pre-treatment unit (GPC Lab) was built that time. A MICADAS type Accelerator A new MICADAS type accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) system was installed in HEKAL during the summer of 2011. The MICADAS was developed in close cooperation with ETHZ (Zürich, Switzerland) and the NSF AMS Laboratory of Arizona University (Tucson, Arizona, USA) . A new AMS C-14 sample preparation lab was also established to serve the AMS measurements in Debrecen. Several national and international research organizations, museums, and industrial partners are using the fast and effective C¹⁴ analysis method at Atomki.