Production and separation of carrier-free 7Be

Abstract

A high-purity carrier-free (7)Be was efficiently isolated following proton bombardment of a lithium hydroxide-aluminum target. The separation of beryllium from lithium and aluminum was achieved through a hydrochloric acid elution system utilizing cation exchange chromatography. The beryllium recovery, +99%, was assessed through gamma spectroscopy while the chemical purity was established by mass spectrometry. The decontamination factors of beryllium from lithium and aluminum were determined to be 6900 and 300, respectively.

Rapid Quantification of 237U Specific Activity for Nuclear Forensics

“…The 235 U solution (Solution 1) was prepared by dissolving 355 mg of metallic HEU (93.2% 235 U) in 35.5 mL of 3 M HNO 3 . The 237 U in Solutions 2–6 was produced in-house at the Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (CAMS) of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , after bombardment of three depleted uranium foils (198–218 mg/cm 2 ) with 15.0 MeV protons ( 238 U­(p,x) 237 U). Following irradiation, the 238 U foils were dissolved in hydrochloric and nitric acids, and purified from most of the fission product impurities using a LN resin (Eichrom) based chromatography separation method. , The fourth batch of 237 U for validation (Solutions 7–9) was provided by Idaho National Laboratory (INL) from irradiation of a depleted uranium target with a beam of bremsstrahlung photons at 26 MeV end point energy followed by radiochemical separation of the coproduced fission products .…”