Rapid Automatic Separation Technology of Trace Np With Presence of Large Quantity of Uranium

Rapid automatic separation of trace amount of neptunium with the presence of large quantity of uranium was studied. A chemical procedure using TTA extraction and anion-exchange was established. The decontamination factors are above 10⁴ for both uranium and plutonium with respect to neptunium. Simultaneously, the recovery of neptunium is above 90%. Based on the chemical separation procedure, an automatic separation device was developed with the functions of quantitative sampling, extraction and automatic chromatographic separation. The whole automatic separation takes 1.9 h and the recovery of neptunium is (71.7±2.8)%(n=5).