What is ISO 10703 about?
Treating and testing radioactive waste before releasing it into water is vital for mitigating health risks. ISO 10703 specifies a method for the physical pre-treatment and conditioning of water samples and the determination of the activity concentration of various radionuclides emitting gamma-rays with energies between 40 keV and 2 MeV, by gamma‑ray spectrometry according to the generic test method described in ISO 20042.
ISO 10703 is applicable to test samples of drinking water, rainwater, surface, and groundwater as well as cooling water, industrial water, domestic and industrial wastewater after proper sampling, sample handling, and test sample preparation (filtration when necessary and considering the amount of dissolved material in the water).
Note 1: ISO 10703 is applicable to homogeneous samples or samples which are homogeneous via timely filtration.
Note 2: ISO 10703 is suitable for application in emergencies.
Who is ISO 10703 for?
ISO 10703 on water quality (high-resolution gamma-ray spectrometry) is useful for:
- Government testing laboratories
- Industries that release wastewater in natural water bodies
- Geological scientists
- Nuclear power plants
- Public water supply systems
Why should you use ISO 10703?
Radioactivity from several naturally occurring and anthropogenic sources is present throughout the environment. Thus, water bodies (e.g., surface waters, groundwaters, sea waters) can contain radionuclides of natural, human-made, or both origins.
The test method described in ISO 10703 is used during planning, existing, and emergency exposure situations as well as for wastewaters and liquid effluents with specific modifications that could increase the overall uncertainty, detection limit, and threshold.
What’s changed since the last update?
ISO 10703:2021 supersedes EN ISO 10703:2015, which is withdrawn. ISO 10703:2021 includes some technical changes with respect to EN ISO 10703:2015. These include:
- New common Introduction
- Scope enlarged to an emergency and wastewater
- The sample storage conditions comply
- Modification of the reference source for calibration
- Addition of the correction factor for dead time and pile up
