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Fundamental Understanding of Nucleation Processes to Assess Solution Stability and Phase Growth and Genesis


EMSL Project ID
49441

Abstract

Many activities in the nuclear industry are areas of concern for public safety. The leakage of nuclear waste from Hanford storage tanks poses a threat to public health, and the retrieval and reprocessing of this waste into a more stable form is a high priority. Nuclear forensics and the ability to identify the origin of a nuclear material (e.g., fuel or weapon components) is another important area of work. The morphology of a plutonium oxide and other physiochemical signatures can give insight into its manufacturing process and origin. Our ability to better reprocess nuclear waste or better “reverse engineer” how nuclear material was produced depends on a greater understanding of the fundamentals of crystallization and growth in plutonium crystal phases.
Advances in the understanding the fundamentals of crystal growth have a broad impact beyond the field of nuclear chemistry. Chemistry at solid/solution interfaces plays a role in fields as diverse as semiconductor manufacturing and environmental remediation. Investigating the fundamental aspects of precipitation should lead to new insights into interfacial science because interfaces are created during precipitation.
The purpose of this project is to develop a physicochemical framework for predicting and manipulating precipitation reactions relevant to nuclear materials processing and attribution, and to produce new insight into interfacial chemistry. This depends on the ability to accurately characterize materials at the micro and nanoscale and throughout their growth process. EMSL resources such as the Titan TEMs will provide structural information at the nanoscale, while the Pore Scale Micromodels (micro-Raman spectroscopy) will give insight into microscopic behaviors and time-resolved spectroscopy will enable observation of the dynamic crystal growth process. EMSL also offers near-unparalleled access to state of the art instrumentation that may be used with radioactive samples. The ability to use the Rad Annex instruments with our plutonium samples is critical to this project.

Project Details

Start Date
2016-07-07
End Date
2016-09-30
Status
Closed

Team

Principal Investigator

Gregg Lumetta
Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Team Members

William Isley
Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Michele Conroy
Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Jennifer Soltis
Institution
Issaquah School District

Sayandev Chatterjee
Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Edgar Buck
Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Zheming Wang
Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory