Year
1998
Abstract
The Nuclear Materials Stabilization and Storage Division at SRS plans to stabilize selected plutonium scrap residue materials for long term storage by dissolution processing and plans to stabilize other plutonium vault materials via high-temperature furnace processing. To support these nuclear material stabilization activities, the SRS Analytical Laboratories Department (ALD) will provide characterization of materials required prior to the dissolution or the high-firing of these materials. Lab renovations to install new analytical instrumentation are underway to support these activities that include glove boxes with simulated-process dissolution and high-pressure microwave dissolution capability. Inductively-coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES), inductively- coupled mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and thermal-ionization mass spectrometry (TIMS) will be used to measure actinide isotopics and metallic impurities. New high-speed actinide separation methods have been developed that will be applied to isotopic characterization of nuclear materials by TIMS and ICP-MS to eliminate isobaric interferences between Pu-238 /U-238 and Pu- 241/Am-241. TEVA Resinâ, UTEVA Resinâ, and TRU Resinâ columns will be used with vacuumassisted flow rates to minimize TIMS and ICP-MS sample turnaround times. For metallic impurity analysis, rapid column removal methods using UTEVA Resinâ, AGMP-1â anion resin and AG MP- 50â cation resin have also been developed to remove plutonium and uranium matrix interferences prior to ICP-AES and ICP-MS measurements.