Enhancing capability of ICP-MS to enable rapid detection of radioisotopes

There are several soft beta and alpha emitters that are a challenge for nuclear waste characterisation such as 63Ni and the plutonium and minor actinide elements. Legacy soils associated with fast breeder sites require assessment of the isotopic ratio of plutonium to determine the origin of waste and determine if it is associated with earlier authorised release. Currently at trace levels this requires accelerator mass spectrometry methods that are expensive and time consuming.

This project will expand the capability of ICP-MS for elemental/radionuclide analysis to avoid pre-treatment combining tandem methods with the resonance ionization method CRIS. Ultimately providing a routine method for LLW/VLLW characterization. This will develop resonance ionization schemes for atoms and molecules using the CRIS method. This method efficiently suppresses interference species by more than 7 orders of magnitude allowing rates of a few atoms/second to be studied. This has the potential to revolutionize techniques such as ICP-MS by efficiently removing 'all' interference species. The CRIS method has been applied to radioactive molecular systems allowing it to also be combined with tandem ICP-MS techniques. Ultimately enabling the development of a method where all actinides can be measured in a single run, including shorter-lived Pu-241 enabling total Pu analysis.