Actinides AMS for nuclear safeguards and related applications

Plutonium and uranium contamination in soils from former nuclear weapon test sites in Australia

“…Details of the facility and methods are given elsewhere [24]. Plutonium samples were analysed for the isotopes 239 Pu, 240 Pu and 242 Pu; uranium samples for 233 U, 234 U and 236 U.…”

Quantifying sources of fine sediment supplied to post-fire debris flows using fallout radionuclide tracers

“…Samples were analysed for plutonium by AMS using the actinides beamline of the ANTARES FN Tandem accelerator as previously described by Hotchkis et al (2010). In summary, this technique generates PuO − ions from samples using a negative ion sputter source, accelerates these ions to a 4 MV terminal where they are stripped with argon gas, and from this stripped ion beam Pu 5 + ions are selected for analysis using a spherical geometry 90°electrostatic analyser.…”

Investigation of gas stripping at 4.1MeV for high mass negative ions

“…Charge state distributions have been obtained from beam transmission measurements in the ANTARES FN tandem accelerator at ANSTO, using the first part of the actinides AMS beamline [1,2]. Beams emerging from the accelerator are analysed using a 12°e lectrostatic deflector and brought to focus by an electrostatic quadrupole doublet at a Faraday cup after the deflector (the 'DE Cup', see Fig.…”

“…The accelerator transmission is itself a combination of the beam optical transmission, which can be close to 100% with appropriate design, and the yield of the positive charge state selected for analysis. In the analysis of actinides by AMS with ANSTO's ANTARES accelerator [1,2], an accelerator transmission of 4-5% is achieved for the 5+ charge state at 4 MV terminal voltage using argon gas stripping. This is the lowest charge state which can be analysed with the existing analysing magnet (2 m radius, mass-energy product 250).…”