RE: Pu in DU?

["Karam, Andrew" <Andrew_Karam@URMC.Rochester.edu>]

If your DU comes from recycled reactor fuel or from a gaseous diffusion
plant that once used recycled fuel as feed then you may well have some Pu.
This was noted at the Portsmouth GDP in the late 1970s and residual
transuranics (TRU), including Pu, Am, and Np were found in small quantities
in the mid-1990s.  An enrichment plant will put everything with an atomic
mass of 238 or so into the same cylinder without asking which element it is.
The people I spoke with were quite certain they were seeing legitimate Pu,
Np, and Am based on their analytical techniques.

On the other hand, if no recycled fuel was ever present in the stream from
which your DU originated, you shouldn't have any Pu at all.  

Andy

P. Andrew Karam, CHP
Radiation Safety Officer
University of Rochester
(716) 275-1473 (voice)
(716) 256-0365 (fax)
andrew_karam@urmc.rochester.edu 

There is no Chase so pleasant, methinks, as to drive a Thought, by good
conduct, from one end of the World to the other; and never to lose sight
of it till it fall into Eternity, where all things are lost as to our
knowledge.
T. Burnet, The Theory of the Earth, 1697
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