Californium Recovery from Palladium Wire

Technical Report · Fri Aug 01 00:00:00 EDT 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1185525· OSTI ID:1185525

Burns, Jon D. ^[1]

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1. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

The recovery of ²⁵²Cf from palladium-²⁵²Cf cermet wires was investigated to determine the feasibility of implementing it into the cermet wire production operation at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Radiochemical Engineering Development Center. The dissolution of Pd wire in 8 M HNO₃ and trace amounts of HCl was studied at both ambient and elevated temperatures. These studies showed that it took days to dissolve the wire at ambient temperature and only 2 hours at 60°C. Adjusting the ratio of the volume of solvent to the mass of the wire segment showed little change in the kinetics of dissolution, which ranged from 0.176 mL/mg down to 0.019 mL/mg. A successful chromatographic separation of ¹⁵³Gd, a surrogate for ²⁵²Cf, from Pd was demonstrated using AG 50x8 cation exchange resin with a bed volume of 0.5 mL and an internal diameter of 0.8 cm.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
• DOE Contract Number: DE-AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1185525
• Report Number(s): ORNL/TM-2014/211; ST6001031; NEST001
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English