An approach for collaboratively separation and detection of uranium based on novel plastic scintillating resin

Abstract

It is extremely significant to monitor the radioactive uranium during the process of nuclear energy mining and disposal because of its high levels of chemical and radiological toxicity. In this work, a novel uranium plastic scintillator resin (U-PSresin) was successfully synthesized by suspension polymerization and used to rapidly enrich and determine uranium by Liquid Scintillation Counting (LSC). The U-PSresin shows excellent irradiation stability, extremely appropriate adsorption capacity of U(VI) (9.35 mg/g), which is convenient for the accurate measurement of LSC. Meanwhile, U-PSresin has a deviation of less than 5 % in adsorption and measurement repeatability and can be utilized to accurately measure more than 1 mg of natural uranium after enrichment. For different types of spiked water samples, the measurement deviation of U-PSresin is less than 15 %. This work demonstrates that U-PSresin can selectively enrich and quantitatively measure uranium in an aqueous environment, showcasing its significant potential in nuclear emergency scenarios and environmental monitoring.