Plutonium irradiated targets, extraction

Extraction Chromatographic Process for Plutonium Irradiated Targets... 

Bourges, X, C. Madic and G. Koehly, 1980, Transplutonium element production program extraction chromatographic process for plutonium irradiated targets, in Actinide Separations, ACS Symposium Series, Vol. 117, eds J.D. Navratil and W.W. Schulz (American Chemical Society, Washington, DC) p. 33. 

An initial experiment involving the treatment of small irradiated Pu/Al targets for the production of americium 243 and curium 244 was carried out in France in 1968 (2). The chemical process was based essentially on the use of a system comparable to the Talspeak system. After plutonium extraction by a 0.08 M trilaurylammonium nitrate solution in dodecane containing 3 vol % 2-octanol, the actinides (americium, curium) were coextracted with a fraction of the lanthanides by a 0.25 M HDEHP -dodecane solvent from an aqueous solution previously neutralized by A1(N0 ) x(0H)x and adjusted to 0.04 M DTPA. The actinides were selectively stripped by placing the organic phase in contact with an aqueous solution of the composition 3 M LiN0 -0.05 M DTPA. While this experiment achieved the recovery of 150 mg of americium 243 and 15 mg of curium 244 with good yields, the process presented a drawback due to the slow extraction of Al(III) which saturates the HDEHP. This process was therefore abandoned. 

The treatment of irradiated plutonium targets by extraction chromatography allowed the purification of the isotopes 2l 3Am and 2I+I+Cm on the scale of few tens of grams. This process proved to be extremely simple and flexible, and yielded results which are reproducible in time. The chief advantage of the TBP process over the HDEHP process in high and medium activity conditions lies in the... 

Since 1958, more than 20 nuclides of actinides ranging from neptunium to einsteinium were identified and prepared for tracer studies. From neutron-irradiated uranium samples 2 9Np was adjusted to the pentavalent state and separated by TBP extraction from perchloric acid media. Plutonium-239 was separated by TBP extraction from nitric acid solution followed by anion exchange in a system of Dowex-1 resin and nitric acid. Neptunium-237 was separated from a spent fuel solution of JRR-1 (Japan Research Reactor -1) using anion exchange and TBP extraction. The TBP extraction in the hydrochloric acid medium is a simple and effective technique to purify neptunium from plutonium contamination. On the other hand, both anion exchange and solvent extraction with HDEHP could be used to separate tracer scale plutonium from irradiated neptunium targets. 

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