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Undeclared uranium hitches a ride on cobalt exports from Congo, study says
Philippe (left) and Manzuk quantified the amount of uranium that has been exported from the DRC in cobalt shipments or left behind in the environment. (Photo: Joel Hallberg/UW–Madison)
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Princeton University have published a study in Nature Communications that calls attention to a blind spot in nuclear nonproliferation: The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has exported thousands of metric tons of uranium, and there is no accounting for where it has gone.
In partnership with Lighthouse Reports and the Financial Times, UW–Madison nuclear engineering professor and nuclear security expert Sébastien Philippe and Ryan Manzuk, a geologist and research fellow in Philippe’s group and at Princeton, conducted the study using countrywide mineralization and geochemical data.
Arpita Datta, N. Sivaraman, T. G. Srinivasan, P. R. Vasudeva Rao
Nuclear Technology | Volume 182 | Number 1 | April 2013 | Pages 84-97
Technical Paper | Reprocessing | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A15829
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A single-stage dual-column chromatographic technique has been developed in this study for separation and determination of lanthanides in a uranium matrix. A 5-cm-length reversed-phase column coated with tri-n-octylphosphine oxide (TOPO) was connected in series to a 10-cm-length reversed-phase monolithic column (dynamically modified into a cation exchange column) to accomplish individual isolation of lanthanides from the uranium matrix. The proposed technique eliminates the step of uranium matrix removal for the determination of lanthanides. Samples with a lanthanide-to-uranium ratio (1 part lanthanide to 105 parts uranium) were directly injected into the dual column for the quantitative determination of lanthanides without uranium matrix removal. In some studies, samples of lanthanides in the uranium matrix could be injected as much as 45 times consecutively into a high-performance liquid chromatography system for determination of lanthanides without any uranium elution. The retention behavior of Pu(IV), Pu(III), Am(III), and fission products was also investigated on the TOPO-coated support. The single-stage dual-column chromatographic technique was demonstrated for the determination of fission products such as La and Nd in the dissolver solution of pressurized heavy water reactor spent fuel for the measurement of atom percent fission burnup. The technique can also be employed to estimate lanthanide impurities in samples of UO2 (1 part lanthanide to 106 parts uranium) without removal of the uranium matrix.