Development of a fast and efficient analytical technique for the isotopic analysis of fission and actinide elements in environmental matrices

Rare Earth Element Determination in Uranium Ore Concentrates Using Online and Offline Chromatography Coupled to ICP-MS

“…Signal smoothing enabled the fitted peak areas between isotope peaks from the same element to be compared, yielding isotopic ratios in atom percent. The peak fitting and smoothing settings applied to determine peak area, found within the "Peak Detection" settings of the Qtegra software, are as detailed previously [27,28,33]. Where slight peak overlap occurred for Yb and Lu the isobaric peaks were statistically deconvoluted using the "multiple peak fitting" function of the OriginLab ® OriginPro ® 2018 graphing software (OriginLab Corporation, Wellesley Hills, MA, USA).…”

“…The REE suite has significant isobaric and polyatomic interferences, hence separation is vital for precise isotope ratio measurements. To eliminate the interference effects for the IDMS measurement, the REE are separated by an ion-exchange column and elute in order of their atomic radii (largest to smallest) [27,31]. A representative chromatogram of the elution profile of the REEs of interest can be seen in Figure 2.…”

“…Ion chromatography has been used to separate actinides and uranium fission products since the 1980s, and subsequently has been applied to REEs separations in environmental samples and uranium material such as nuclear fuel or irradiated material [14,[22][23][24][25]. Recently, methods using high-performance ion chromatography (HPIC) have been developed to separate a wide variety of elements, including REEs, from various sample types including spent nuclear fuel [14], sediment and soil samples [26,27], irradiated highly enriched uranium targets [28], and transplutonium elements created from an irradiated californium target [29]. Often, HPIC uses a cation exchange column to separate lanthanides based on charge density.…”

Nuclear Analytical and Chemical Isotopics Laboratories Sample Analytical Plan for the Sister Rod Spent Nuclear Fuel Specimens

“…The atomic percent ratios will be converted to mass percent before reporting. The chromatographic peak fitting and smoothing settings applied to determine peak areas, found within the "Peak Detection" settings of Qtegra, are as detailed previously [3][4][5][6][7].…”

RAPID: The Development and Application of a Hybrid High Pressure Ion Chromatography and Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry Method for the Direct Analysis of Irradiated Materials

“…The recoveries of these isotopes in particular, when compared to gamma analysis, demonstrates the efficiency of the separation scheme, as all of these species have at least one isobaric interference when analyzed by mass. It was hoped that the previous application of IDMS to RAPID for the acquisition of low-uncertainty measurements of lanthanide elements in a complex matrix [54] could be repeated here. However, it would only be warranted if full recovery of the sample was achieved.…”