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Separation of Uranium Mixing with its Decayed Nuclides and its Activated Nuclides
Author(s) -
Wu KuenLi,
Lo JemMau
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
journal of the chinese chemical society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.329
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 2192-6549
pISSN - 0009-4536
DOI - 10.1002/jccs.199000060
Subject(s) - chemistry , nuclide , uranium , radiochemistry , plutonium , radionuclide , aqueous solution , xylene , extraction (chemistry) , nuclear chemistry , chromatography , toluene , metallurgy , organic chemistry , materials science , physics , quantum mechanics
Extractions of uranium from the acidic media, HCl and MNO 3 at different concentrations, by the tertiary amines, trilaurylamine, triisooctyllamine and trioctylamine were systematically investigated. In experiments, 232 U was used as the tracer and aliquots of both phases after extractions were taken, ashed at 500°C, placed onto stainless steel planchets, and measured by a surface‐barrier Si(Li) detector connected to an alpha spectrometer. One unique condition found useful for complete separation of uranium was that of the radioactive uranium present in 8 M HCl being extracted with 10% trilaurylamine in xylene. In that case, greater than 95% of the uranium could be extracted into the organic solution, whereas all of the radionuclides of a series of its decayed products, 228 h, 224 Ra, 220 Rn, 216 Po and 212 Bi remained completely in the aqueous solution. The same procedure could also be used for the separation of uranium from a mixture with its activated nuclides. Plutonium‐239 and Am were used as the tracers representing the activated nuclides of uranium. It was found that 241 Am was absolutely not extracted, but that 239 Pu could be extracted with ≥95% efficiency from the medium of 8 M HCl into 10% trilaurylamine in xylene. However, 239 Pu could be easily stripped using the solution mixture of 8 M HCl and 0.05 M NH 4 I and excluded from the organic solution.