A highly-enriched Pu-244 reference material for nuclear safeguards and nuclear forensics measurements

摘要

A highly-enriched Pu-244 isotope dilution reference material has been prepared and characterized for metrologically traceable measurements of very small quantities of plutonium. The amount of plutonium in samples associated with nuclear safeguards and nuclear forensic measurements can be significantly less than 1 ng. Accordingly, the ability to quantify the amount and isotopic composition of plutonium from a single mass-spectrometric analysis is particularly desirable. The highly-enriched Pu-244 reference material, described here, will minimize the magnitude of spike corrections necessary to obtain accurate information on plutonium isotopic composition from isotope dilution measurements.