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Separation of high-purity 244Pu for safeguards applications

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Abstract

244Pu is commonly recognized as the most suitable spike for low-level mass-spectrometric plutonium analysis. However the currently available tracers based on 244Pu are very few and lack isotopic purity. Two-stage electromagnetic separation of plutonium isotopes was performed from a 0.5 g portion of PuO2 material containing plutonium with ~17.5 % 244Pu. The first round of separation yielded approximately 10 mg Pu with ~98.9 % 244Pu. The second round was verified to have produced 0.88 mg Pu with over 99.98 % 244Pu. The final separation product will be certified as a spike for isotope dilution mass spectrometry, to meet the needs of international safeguards for decades to come.

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the efforts of David Donohue (IAEA), Stanislav Vesnovskii (VNIIEF), and Steven Goldberg (DOE), whose persistence contributed to the eventual success of this long-standing project. The authors are grateful to Nikolay Zavyalov and Olga Vorontsova for their leadership and coordination of work carried out at VNIIEF. Vitaly Domkin (KRI) and Ross Williams (LLNL) provided for the timely and precise verification analyses of the separation product samples.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Safeguards, International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna International Centre, PO box 100, 1400, Vienna, Austria

    M. V. Peńkin & M. A. Humphrey

  2. Russian Federal Nuclear Center – Institute of Experimental Physics, Sarov, Nizhni Novgorod, Russia, 607188

    A. A. Kryzhanovsky & V. N. Vyachin

  3. US Department of Energy – National Nuclear Security Administration, Washington, DC, 20585, USA

    A. Iyengar

Authors
  1. M. V. Peńkin
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  2. M. A. Humphrey
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  3. A. A. Kryzhanovsky
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  4. V. N. Vyachin
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  5. A. Iyengar
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Correspondence to M. V. Peńkin.

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Peńkin, M.V., Humphrey, M.A., Kryzhanovsky, A.A. et al. Separation of high-purity 244Pu for safeguards applications. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 307, 2091–2094 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-015-4353-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-015-4353-5

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