Direct measurement of tritium production rate in LiPb with removed parasitic activities: Preliminary experiments

Abstract

Liquid scintillation (LS) technique applied to direct measurement of tritium activity produced in LiPb eutectic in Frascati HCLL TBM mock-up neutronic experiment has been tested so far in the case of LS measurement after long period since irradiation. LiPb samples irradiated in neutron filed show, except of tritium, meaningful activity of other radioisotopes (parasitic). Parasitic activity, mainly from isotopes of lead (209Pb, 204mPb, 203Pb) calculated with the use of FISPACT, exceeds ca 5 times tritium activity 1.4h after irradiation. We propose to remove disturbing radioisotopes in a chemical way to avoid long “cooling” of the irradiated samples before tritium measurement. Samples (1g of LiPb) irradiated in reactor fast neutron flux were diluted and metallic cations removed by chemical precipitation. For this purpose we used: potassium iodide (KJ), strontium chloride (SrCl2), APDC (C5H8NS2·NH4), NaDDTC (C5H10NNaS2·3H2O), and PAN (C15H11N3O). Precipitation procedure in each case lasted ca 5–25min, and the following filtration next 10–20min. In each filtrate (ca 120ml) we measured Pb concentration in total reflection X-ray fluorescence (TXRF) analyzer and parasitic activity (left after 21-day “cooling”) applying HPGe gamma spectrometer. Pb cations precipitated by SrCl2 and than by PAN lowered activity of Pb isotopes to less than 1% of the initial tritium activity. Another combination of reagents: NaDDTC followed by SrCl2 in a single and double step filtration reduced Pb concentration 102 and 104 times, respectively. Reduction of this order allows tritium radiometric measurement ca 3h after irradiation with acceptable accuracy. This time can be shortened by applying correction for decay of known parasitic activity. Input of 76As and other less abundant radioisotopes can be eliminated using high purity LiPb. Tritium activity of the filtrates measured in LS spectrometer showed no dependence upon used reagent being, within measurement error, the same as for analyzed LiPb samples.