Quantitative Analysis for Impurities in Uranium by Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry: Improvements in the Experimental Setup

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Abstract
With the aim of reducing the volume of radioactive wastes produced during the use of elemental analysis methods, combining LA with ICP-MS in a glove box has been studied. The ablation of solid uranium samples was achieved with an XeCl excimer laser (308 nm), using an ablation cell developed in this laboratory. After spatial filtering, the pulse-to-pulse repeatability (RSD) of the laser beam intensity was 1.2%. The precision (RSD) achieved for the determination of impurities (Si, Cr, Fe, Co, Cu, Mo, Sn and Pb) contained in the uranium matrix was 1–3% for most elements, after optimising the ion lens settings of the spectrometer. This precision can be improved for elements subjected to interferences, such as Fe and Si, by modifying the atmosphere in the glove box surrounding the plasma. The detection limits for the impurities studied were less than 0.1 µg g -1 .

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