Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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INDUCTIVELY COUPLED PLASMA MASS SPECTROMETRY FOR THE DETERMINATION OF 237Np IN SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL SAMPLES BY ISOTOPE DILUTION METHOD USING 239Np AS A SPIKE

  • Received : 2012.08.27
  • Accepted : 2013.02.01
  • Published : 2013.06.25
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Abstract

A determination method for $^{237}Np$ in spent nuclear fuel samples was developed using an isotope dilution method with $^{239}Np$ as a spike. In this method, inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) was taken for the $^{237}Np$ instead of the previously used alpha spectrometry. $^{237}Np$ and $^{239}Np$ were measured by ICP-MS and gamma spectrometry, respectively. The recovery yield of $^{237}Np$ in synthetic samples was $95.9{\pm}9.7$% (1S, n=4). The $^{237}Np$ contents in the spent fuel samples were 0.15, 0.25, and $1.06{\mu}g/mgU$ and these values were compared with those from ORIGEN-2 code. A fairly good agreement between the measurements (m) and calculations (c) was obtained, giving ratios (m/c) of 0.93, 1.12 and 1.25 for the three PWR spent fuel samples with burnups of 16.7, 19.0, and 55.9 GWd/MtU, respectively.

Keywords

References

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