Sulfur-functionalized solid-phase materials for the selective separation of arsenic and selenium.

Radioactive arsenic (As) isotopes are of growing interest for applications in nuclear medicine, national security, and environmental research. Recent efforts at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) have focused on aqueous harvesting of selenium-72,73 (Se) and their daughter isotopes, arsenic-72,73 (As), which are particularly valuable for medical applications and nuclear data studies, respectively. Both conventional isotope production and harvesting methods require chemical separations to purify radioactive As from parent and co-produced Se radioisotopes.

Group hexavalent actinide separation from lanthanides using sodium bismuthate chromatography.

Advanced used nuclear fuel (UNF) reprocessing strategies are limited by the complex radiochemical separations and engineering required to achieve the separation of actinides (An) from neutron scavenging lanthanides (Ln). The accessibility of the hexavalent oxidation state for the actinides (U - Am) provides a pathway to achieving a group hexavalent actinide separation from the trivalent lanthanides and Cm. The solid oxidant and ion exchanger, sodium bismuthate (NaBiO), has been demonstrated to quantitatively oxidize and separate Am from trivalent Cm in a column chromatographic system.

Radiochemical diagnostics at the National Ignition Facility.

Since the National Ignition Facility (NIF) was commissioned in 2009, radiochemical techniques have been viewed as a potential method for diagnosing the performance of an NIF fusion shot. Radiochemical methods can also be used in conjunction with NIF shots to measure nuclear reaction cross sections in regimes that are inaccessible at accelerator facilities and can provide a route to produce radioactive tracer materials that can be used for other applications. This review presents the current status of radiochemical diagnostics at the NIF.

Harvesting Zr from heavy-ion beam irradiated tungsten at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory.

Tungsten is a commonly used material at many heavy-ion beam facilities, and it often becomes activated due to interactions with a beam. Many of the activation products are useful in basic and applied sciences if they can be recovered efficiently. In order to develop the radiochemistry for harvesting group (IV) elements from irradiated tungsten, a heavy-ion beam containing Zr was embedded into a stack of tungsten foils at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory and a separation methodology was devised to recover the Zr.