DESTRUCTIVE ANALYSIS CRMS: DEVELOPING A HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURE OF TRACEABILITY IN THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

The Russian system for certified reference materials (chemical standards or CRMs) for the destructive analysis (DA) of nuclear materials is based on a horizontal hierarchy as opposed to the U.S. and European systems embracing a vertical hierarchy. The Russian system places the responsibility for defining suitable DA reference materials on the nuclear facilities analytical laboratories. The laboratories, performing analyses using analysis methods certified by the All Russian Institute of Inorganic Materials (VNIINM), obtain their DA reference materials from a few Russian suppliers. In some cases where there are no established suppliers, the facility analytical laboratory has to use surrogate materials or purify their own nuclear materials for use as reference materials. Working with the U.S. New Brunswick Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, VNIINM has begun a project to produce plutonium and uranium oxide reference materials. These reference materials will be certified by the VNIINM, as authorized by the Russian Ministry for Atomic Energy (Minatom). These reference materials will be available to all Russian nuclear facility analytical laboratories and will provide vertical traceability at the Minatom sector level. The uranium and plutonium oxide reference materials will be certified for elemental weight fraction, and the plutonium oxide will also be certified for isotopic composition to serve mass spectrometry. Once these CRMs are available, they will provide vertical traceability for both DA supporting MC&A and for the fabrication and certification of NDA reference materials. This presentation will elaborate on the traditional Russian hierarchical system for reference materials and describe the Russian CRM program for uranium and plutonium.