Nuclear Security and Isotope Technology Division, Decomposition Analysis of Neodymium-Loaded Resin.

摘要

In an effort to understand and quantify the carbon and sulfur contents of a curium oxide production process performed in the hot cells at Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Radiochemical Engineering Development Center, a non-radioactive surrogate was used in a similar oxide formation process. Neodymium (Nd), which was chosen as a substitute for curium, was loaded onto a Dowex 50W-X8 resin by use of ion exchange column techniques and then treated under a variety of processing conditions. The surrogate product was analyzed for carbon and sulfur impurities, using inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry for sulfur assessment, a LECO combustion furnace/analyzer for carbon quantification, and X-ray diffraction for compound identification. The results indicate that the carbon and sulfur contents in the Nd oxide were similar to current estimations for curium oxide using the reference hot cell process. It was also seen that the major surrogate product of the hot cell process contained sulfur in a Nd oxysulfate (Nd2O2SO4) compound. Parametric analysis of the resin decomposition process revealed that increasing the temperature to 1400 degrees C yielded considerably better removal of carbon and sulfur.