The radioactive contamination in the ocean has raised significant concern on the environmental impact among Asian and Pacific countries since the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident (Mar 11, 2011). The first step in determining the contamination by the radioactive material is monitoring anomalies of environmental radioactivity of interest. As a result, each country has its own environmental radioactivity surveillance program. Strontium-90 (half-life 28.8 y) is one of the radionuclides of high interest in the environment, owing to its high fission production rate and biological accumulation resulting from similar chemical behavior with calcium. The level of Strontium-90 in the seawater is very low, with a global average of about 1 mBq kg-1. Consequently, it requires large volume of seawater sample, typically ranging from 40 L to 60 L. The purification of 90Sr from seawater sample is challenging due to the high salinity and presence of stable Sr (about 7 ppm). Therefore, the conventional method for determining 90Sr is time-consuming and labor-intensive work. The author reported an advanced method, which is a more analyst-friendly and simpler method compared to the current method, for the determination of 90Sr in seawater. This method focuses on the separation of 90Y, which is equilibrium with 90Sr, utilizing a commercialized extraction resin. As a result, it takes less than 3 hours to determine 90Sr in 50 L of seawater sample and requires less labor. Additionally, this approach could be applied to the analysis of 90Sr in radioactive waste

• Hyuncheol Kim(Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI)) Corresponding author