Sample Solution and Exchange with Carriers

The radiochemist may have need to recover rare gases from a variety of target materials, though most usually from heavy elements in which fission has occurred. Any method suitable for bringing the target material into a clear solution may be used in principle. Since the recovery of the rare gases inust be effected from the volatile products of solution, solution procedures which produce the more tractable gdseous products are to be desired. Methods reported in the literature for the solution of spent fuel elements and re- 

Solution of metal targets is usually done with acid. If the choice is available the products from solution with hydrochloric acid are simpler to handle than those with nitric acid. Thus uranium is easily dissolved in concentrated HCl with a few drops of 30% added and the HCl fumes simply 

H FO has also been found satisfactory and hydrogen is the only gaseous product. Aluminum dissolves nicely in 6N NaOH, again with no gaseous products by hydrogen. This method of solution may be useful for aluminum catcher foils or as a preliminary to the solution of small targets clad in relatively large amounts of aluminum. 

A particularly neat method for removing rare gases from targets has 

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