Application of atmospheric pressure ionization mass spectrometry to cover gas analysis in fast reactors

This paper proposes to apply atmospheric pressure ionization mass spectrometry to on-line real-time monitoring gas analysis in fast reactors. The experimental results have shown that the quantitative analysis of the low ppt level can be achieved for all isotopes of krypton and xenon contained in argon except for the species, 78Kr, 80Kr, 124Xe and 126Xe that suffer interference by cluster ions. The excellent sensitivity is attributed to an ion concentration effect in an atmospheric pressure ionization process driven by the difference in ionization potential between argon and krypton or xenon. The detection limits (3σ) are estimated to be 20 ppt for 84Kr and 2.3 ppt for 132Xe in the present condition.