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DOE OSTI2023

Actinide Science for Post Detonation Nuclear Forensic Analyses

Actinide and fission product separations, analyses, and solid material syntheses are key to supporting the development and testing of new nuclear forensic science technologies and for training nuclear emergency responders to effectively respond to nuclear emergency events. In this presentation, nuclear forensic scientist Dr. Mathew Snow will discuss a variety of technologies developed at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and around the world for these applications. The presentation will include discussions of new approaches to rapid, high-efficiency chemical separations, sample preparation and analysis techniques for field-deployable actinide analyses, and techniques recently developed at INL for producing solid nuclear fallout simulant materials. An overview of the challenges confronting researchers in these area, along with possible opportunities, will also be provided.

Nuclear Forensics↗

DOE OSTI2023

Retention of radionuclides in sol–gel surrogate nuclear explosive debris

Sol–gel vitrification can be used to rapidly produce solid, vitreous materials to support nuclear forensics research. Here, this work investigates three sol–gel synthetic approaches’ ability to retain fission products within the glass as a function of drying temperature. Eight of the ten fission products studied were quantitatively retained (less than 5% losses) at temperatures up to 600 °C for glasses prepared using an acidic catalyst and at temperatures up to 300 °C for glasses prepared using a basic catalyst. Both systems show partial loss of ruthenium and complete loss of iodine at temperatures above 300 and 100 °C, respectively.

38 RADIATION CHEMISTRY, RADIOCHEMISTRY, AND NUCLEA↗