Emission Spectrographic Determination of Americium in Plutonium.

Abstract

Americium is one of the more important impurity elements found in plutonium because of its growth (as Am241) from radioactive decay of Pu241, a common plutonium isotopic constituent. A method is described in which americium is determined simultaneously with other impurities by emission spectrography after separation from plutonium by anion exchange in 8N nitric acid. Europium is used as an internal standard for americium while cobalt is used for the other impurity elements. The rate of burning of the sample during spectrographic excitation is controlled by the use of a gallium oxide matrix. The relative standard deviation of the method for americium is less than 6% with a lower limit of detection of 0.03 µg.