Direct determination of uranium in sintered deeply depleted uranium oxide pellets by wavelength dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry

This paper presents studies on direct non-destructive determination of uranium in sintered deeply depleted (DD) uranium oxide (UO2) pellets by wavelength dispersive X-ray fluorescence (WDXRF) spectrometry. A special collet was designed and fabricated for holding the sintered DDUO2 pellets for direct analysis, thus avoiding the sample preparation steps. The samples were analyzed using a calibration plot obtained from WDXRF spectra of matrix matched calibration standards. The WDXRF determined uranium values were found to be in very close agreement with titrimetric values and has reproducibility better than 0.05% (RSD, 1 s, n = 10) for the sintered DDUO2 pellets having U: 86.81–88.04 wt%.