Year
2012
Abstract
Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy is an analysis technology to measure the emission spectra of excited elements in the local plasma of a target material induced by laser. The spectra measured by LIBS are analyzed to verify the quality and quantity of specific element in the target matrix. Since LIBS measurement has several advantages for nuclear applications including simpler sample preparation than a chemical assay and in-situ analysis capability, the LIBS application to nuclear material facility has been developed though it has higher uncertainty than the chemical assay. In particular the feasibility study of LIBS to remotely measure the nuclear material in a high radiation hot cell has been carried out for supporting IAEA safeguards implementation. The main purpose of the application of LIBS to the safeguards is to gain quantitative information regarding uranium and plutonium from the different processing materials. A preliminary experiments on the materials to be handled in the electrochemical-processing facilities need to be conducted a laboratory environment to optimize the hot-cell application of the LIBS technology. In this study we present the current result from the quantitative analysis of uranium in the salt waste produced by electro-chemical spent fuel processing being developed by Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute even though in principle the salt wastes are contaminated by a small amount of uranium. For the experimental setup of LIBS the pulsed Nd-YAG laser is used with pulse energy of 15mJ at 532 nm and a pulse repetition rate 10 Hz and the Echelle spectrometer (LLA, ESA 4000) is used to analyze the emission collected through the fibre optical cable. The spectrograph has a resolution of approximately 20,000 and is equipped with an ICCD detector.