Precipitation methods neptunium separation

The sucessful experiments for the retention of plutonium onto alumina from TTN0 -HF solution gave enough confidence to recomend the proposed method to separate traces of plutonium from waste solutions in the presence of macroamounts of uranium (VI). Of course, only macroamounts of thorium, uranium (IV) and rare earths are serious interfering ions, since they precipitate with HF. The behavior expected for neptunium in the same system should be similar to plutonium, thorium and rare earths. The retention of neptunium from HNO - HF solutions is in progress. The sorption yield for Pu was around 95%. The sorption mechanism is not well established. Figure 3 shows the proposed flowsheet for recovery of Pu traces from reprocessing waste solutions. 

Initially, the only means of obtaining elements higher than uranium was by a-particle bombardment of uranium in the cyclotron, and it was by this means that the first, exceedingly minute amounts of neptunium and plutonium were obtained. The separation of these elements from other products and from uranium was difficult methods were devised involving co-precipitation of the minute amounts of their salts on a larger amount of a precipitate with a similar crystal structure (the carrier ). The properties were studied, using quantities of the order of 10 g in volumes of... 

The wastes from uranium and plutonium processing of the reactor fuel usually contain the neptunium. Precipitation, solvent extraction, ion exchange, and volatihty procedures (see Diffusion separation methods) can be used to isolate and purify the neptunium. 

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