Rapid separation of fresh fission products (draft)
- Donald E.
- Eve
- Lisa A.
The fission of highly eruiched uranium by thermal neutrons creates dozens of isotopic products. The Isotope and Nuclear Chemistry Group participates in programs that involve analysis of 'fiesh' fission products by beta counting following radiochemical separations. This is a laborious and time-consuming process that can take several days to generate results. Gamma spectroscopy can provide a more immediate path to isolopic activities, however short-lived, high-yield isotopes can swamp a gamma spectrum, making difficult the identification and quantification of isotopes on the wings and valley of the fission yield curve. The gamma spectrum of a sample of newly produced fission products is dominated by the many emissions of a very few high-yield isotopes. Specilkally, {sup 132}Te (3.2 d), its daughter, {sup 132}I(2 .28 h), {sup 140}Ba (12.75 d), and its daughter {sup 140}La (1.68 d) emit at least 18 gamma rays above 100 keV that are greater than 5% abundance. Additionally, the 1596 keV emission fiom I4'La imposes a Compton background that hinders the detection of isotopes that are neither subject to matrix dependent fractionation nor gaseous or volatile recursors. Some of these isotopes of interest are {sup 111}Ag, {sup 115}Cd, and the rare earths, {sup 153}Sm, {sup 154}Eu, {sup 156}Eu, and {sup 160}Tb. C-INC has performed an HEU irradiation and also 'cold' carrier analyses by ICP-AES to determine methods for rapid and reliable separations that may be used to detect and quantify low-yield fission products by gamma spectroscopy. Results and progress will be presented.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- OSTI ID:
- 976599
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-03-2385; TRN: US1006490
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: "Submitted to: Sixth International Conference on Methods and Applications of Radioanalytical Chemistry, Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, April 7-11, 2003
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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