Recovery and chemical purification of actinides at JRC, Karlsruhe

Abstract

The application of actinide elements in research and in technology is many times subject to rather stringent purity requirements; often a nuclear grade quality is specified. The additional possible demand for a high isotopic purity is a special feature in the handling of these elements. The amount of actinide elements contained in or adhering to materials declared as waste should be low for safety reasons and out of economic considerations. The release of transuranium elements to the environment must be kept negligible. For these and for other reasons a keen interest in the separation of actinides from various materials exists, either for a re-use through recycling, or for their safe confinement in waste packages. This paper gives a short review of the separation methods used for recovery and purification of actinide elements over the past years in the European Institute for Transuranium Elements. The methods described here involve procedures based on precipitation, ion exchange or solvent extraction; often used in a combination. The extraction methods were preferably applied in a Chromatographie column mode. The actinide elements purified and/or separated from each other by the above methods include uranium, neptunium, plutonium, americium, curium, and californium. For the various elements the work was undertaken with different aims, ranging from reprocessing and fabrication of nuclear fuels on a kilogramme scale, over the procurement of alpha-free waste, to the preparation of neutron sources of milligramme size.