Determination of Nine Impurities in Uranium Products by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry after UTEVA Extraction Chromatographic Separation

Determination of impurity elements in uranium products is very valuable in nuclear forensics tracing and quality control of fuel cartridges. The accuracy of determination is controlled by procedure blank and the recovery of impurity elements. In this study, a method for rapid separation of uranium from impurity elements by UTEVA resin and determination of impurity elements by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) was developed. Results show that UTEVA resin has a strong absorption of uranium. When the sample weight is 16.43 mg, decontamination factor for uranium in the whole procedure is greater than 3×10⁵, the recoveries of nine impurity elements range from 95.1% to 105.1%. The contents of impurity elements in national standard material, GBW04205, are consistent with the reference values within the uncertainty (k=2). The proposed method has good decontamination ability for uranium and is suitable for analyzing impurity elements in low weight uranium samples. This method provides technical support for nuclear forensics tracing and quality control of fuel cartridges.