Abstract
Plutonium metal exchange programs operated by the Rocky Flats Plant were conducted from 1956–1989 to ensure quality and to compare measurements in a plutonium metal matrix. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) re-established the program in 2001 to assess the quality of analytical chemistry capabilities that support special nuclear material characterization. It is the only program of its kind for the preparation and distribution of plutonium metal reference materials with a range of impurity contents to multiple laboratories for destructive measurements of elemental concentration, isotopic abundance, and both metallic and non-metallic impurity levels. This program provides independent verification of analytical measurement capabilities for each of the seven currently participating laboratories, and allows any technical problems with analytical measurements to be identified and corrected. This paper focuses on basic program elements and presents a summary of methods and results for plutonium, uranium, neptunium, and americium, measurements.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the many people that contribute to the success of this program including Bob Putnam, Matt Johnson, and Diane Tompins at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Usha Narayanan and Jon Nuehoff at the New Brunswick Laboratory, Pam Thompson from the Atomic Weapons Establishment, Jacqueline Fonnesbeck at Idaho National Laboratory, Richard Torres at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Delbert Bowers at Argonne National Laboratory. This program is administered by the Los Alamos National Laboratory under the auspices of the U. S. Department of Energy. The Nuclear Weapons Pit Manufacturing Program Office supported this work at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Los Alamos National Laboratory is operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract number DE-AC52-06NA25396. This publication is LAUR-09-4006.
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Tandon, L., Kuhn, K., Decker, D. et al. Plutonium metal standards exchange program for actinide measurement quality assurance (2001–2007). J Radioanal Nucl Chem 282, 565–571 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-009-0215-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-009-0215-3