PEMISAHAN DAN ANALISIS CESIUM DALAM PEB U3Si2/Al TMU 2,96 gU/cm3 PASCA IRADIASI DENGAN METODE PENGENDAPAN CHLOROPLATINATE

Abstract

Fuel burnup is an important parameter for determining the quality and integrity of irradiated nuclear fuel. The most important parameters in the calculation of burnup is the separation process and ¹³⁷Cs content analysis sampled from the irradiated plate fuel. This research has conducted separation and analysis of the ¹³⁷Cs contained in irradiated U₃Si₂/Al plate by chloroplatinate precipitation method. This method requires that the sample has to be made free from elements that may interfere with the precipitation process. The separation is done by precipitation of ¹³⁷Cs isotope in the form of Cs₂PtCl₆. The precipitation process uses CsNO₃ as non-active carrier with varied weight of 0.0263; 0.0501; 0.0754; 0.1036 ; 0.2064; 0.3020, and 0.4017 g. The CsNO₃ carrier is added in order to obtain more ammount of precipitate of Cs in the form of Cs₂PtCl₆ because CsNO₃ has similar chemical properties with ¹³⁷Cs in uranyl nitrate solution. The ¹³⁷Cs isotope is coprecipitated in Cs₂PtCl₆, and γ-spectrometry is used in the determination of the content of ¹³⁷Cs in Cs₂PtCl₆ precipitate. The separation results show that addition of 0,1036 g CsNO₃  has recovered 0.000328 g/g-sample of ¹³⁷Cs from 0.000465 g/g-sample in irradiated U₃Si₂/Al solution, or a recovery of 70.4753%. Recovery value by this method is still lower when compared to other ¹³⁷Cs separation methods due to longer steps of separation process, which may cause many errors in the sample preparation process.