INDENTIFICATION AND PRODUCTION OF PLUTONIUM MONO-OXIDE

摘要

Plutonium is one of the metals whose phase diagram with oxygen has still not been properly studied. The stumbling block is the question of the existence of the lowest plutonium oxide - plutonium mono-oxide. Many foreign researchers have been occupied with this question for more than 50 years. This is presented in detail, though in a compressed form, in the fundamental work [1]. The existence of PuO "as an impurity phase" was first announced in 1949. The identification was made by x-ray diffraction [2]. Powder x-ray diffraction patterns which "could be referred to PuO" were described in the same year [3]. It is sometimes assumed that solid PuO forms in the form of a film on the surface of plutonium metal [1]. The production of solid PuO in the form of a semimetallic substance with almost metallic sheen by reducing the 5 mg of PuOCl with barium vapor at 1250℃ was reported. It is reported in the same work that PuO was obtained in one microscale reduction of PuO+2 by barium vapor [4]. In [1], it was noted that "probably the best method for producing solid PuO was a reaction of micro-gram quantities of fused plutonium with a stoichiometric quantity of oxygen obtained by thermal decomposition of Ag_2O," as described in [5].