DESTRUCTIVE ASSAY OF URANIUM CONCENTRATION BY RELIABLE LASER INDUCED KINETIC PHOSPHORIMETRY ANALYSIS (KPA)

In the present work, a destructive assay system based on tunable pulsed laser KPA has been used for determination of uranium concentration. The system has lower detection limit of 0.01 ng/ml. Calibration of the system was carried out before analysis.Precision (reproducibility) of the results was investigated for different uranium concentrations. The bias does not exceed 2.5%. Samples containing uranium concentrations from 0.01 to 200 ng/ml were precisely analyzed. Uranium in ore and reference solid samples were determined after radiochemical separation. The extraction of uranium was carried out with recovery percentage of more than 80%. Linearity of response of the system was studied for uranyl nitrate solutions of different molarities;10-1 - 10-5 M. Urine and water samples spiked by uranium were also investigated for quenching testing. Detection limit as low as 0.004 ng/ml was obtained. The observed results were found to be satisfactory and highly accurate. The method can be efficiently applied for quality control and analysis of uranium for nuclear safeguards.