Development of Elastic Recoil Detection Technique for Quantifying Light Isotope Concentrations in Irradiated TPBAR Materials.

Technical Report · Mon Oct 01 04:00:00 EDT 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1481590· OSTI ID:1481590

Doyle, Barney L. ^[1]; Taylor, Caitlin Anne ^[1]; Hattar, Khalid Mikhiel ^[1]; Muntifering, Brittany R ^[1]

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1. Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)

The National Nuclear Security Administration's Tritium Sustainment Program is responsible for the design, development, demonstration, testing, analysis, and characterization of tritium-producing burnable absorber rods (TPBARs) and their components, in addition to producing tritium for the nation's strategic stockpile. The FY18 call for proposals included the specific basic science research topic, "Demonstration and evaluation of advanced characterization methods, particularly for quantifying the concentration of light isotopes (¹H, ²H, and ⁴He, ⁶Li, and ⁷Li) in metal or ceramic matrices". A project IWO-389859 was awarded to the Ion Beam Lab (IBL) at Sandia-NM in FY18. This reports the success we had in developing and demonstrating such a method: 42 MeV Si^{+ 7} from the IBL' s Tandem was used to recoil these light isotopes into special detectors that separated all these isotopes by simultaneously measuring the energy and stopping power of these reoils. This technique, called Heavy Ion - Elastic Recoil Detection or HI-ERD, accurately measured the enriched 6 Li/Li-total of 0.246 +- 0.016, compared to the known value of 0.239. The isotopes ¹H, ²H, ⁴He, ⁶Li and ⁷Li were also measured. (page intentionally left blank)

• Research Organization: Sandia National Laboratories (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
• DOE Contract Number: AC04-94AL85000; NA0003525
• OSTI ID: 1481590
• Report Number(s): SAND--2018-11760; 669279
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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