THE ROBOTIZED CHEMICAL TREATMENT OF DILUTED SPENT FUEL SAMPLES PRIOR TO ISOTOPE-DILUTION ANALYSIS

A system made up by a Zymark robot and a separation automate preteats spent fuel samples and monitors a tri-n-octylphosphine oxide column ex traction chromatographic procedure in order to isolate and purify uran ium and plutonium present in the samples, prior to the spectrometric m easurements. Up to 16 subsamples of spent fuel in dried or solution fo rm are handled simultaneously in a completely unattended mode. The thr oughput of the robotized analytical procedure has increased by a facto r of 3 compared to the earlier manual procedure without loss in tile q uality of the chemical treatment and of the mass- and alpha-spectromet ric measurements.