박난희 (한국원자력연구원)

박난희 (한국원자력연구원)

박난희 (한국원자력연구원)

박난희 (한국원자력연구원)

박난희 (한국원자력연구원)

임상호 (한국원자력연구원)

최정운 (한국원자력연구원)

The production age determination of pure plutonium materials is a crucial technique for verifying declared nuclear materials and activities as well as for detecting undeclared nuclear materials and activities. Therefore, development and validation of this analytical capability can provide critical information needed to make credible nuclear safeguards conclusions. Since 2020, the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) has been participating in Action Sheet 54 (AS 54), a technical collaboration with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for plutonium (Pu) age-dating in nuclear forensics. The three laboratories used the 241Am/241Pu (daughter/parent) chronometer to measure and compare the model purification age of the Plutonium Certified Reference Material (CRM) 126-A. Certified Reference Material 126-A is a plutonium metal assay and isotopic reference with a low burn-up isotopic composition (240Pu atomic percentage of 5.8923). Becuase this CRM has not been certified as a standard material for radiochronometry, this collaboration result will contribute to establishing a consensus model age of this CRM, which could be used as a quality control standard in nuclear forensic investigations. In this study, the parent isotope (241Pu) and the daughter isotope (241Am) were separated using UTEVA and TRU resins and quantified using ID-MC-ICP-MS. Based on this analysis, plutonium age-dating was performed and then the results were compared with those of the US national laboratories.