title: Age determination of highly enriched uranium: separation and analysis of 231Pa.
abstract: An analytical procedure has been developed for the age determination of highly enriched uranium samples exploiting the mother/daughter pair 235U/231Pa. Protactinium is separated from bulk uranium through highly selective sorption to silica gel and is subsequently quantified using alpha-spectrometry. The method has been validated using uranium standard reference materials of known ages. It affords decontamination factors exceeding 2.5 x 10(7), overall recoveries in the range of 80-85%, and a combined uncertainty below 5%.
authors.affiliation: European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Institute for Transuranium Elements, Karlsruhe, Germany. morgenstern@itu.fzk.de
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Morgenstern
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Apostolidis
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Mayer
mesh_terms: D006207:Half-Life; D011478:Protactinium / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D011834:Radiation Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014501:Uranium / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D011478:Protactinium; D014501:Uranium