Chemical and Isotopic Characterization of Noble Metal Phase from Commercial UO Fuel.

We report elemental and isotopic analysis for the noble metal fission product phase found in irradiated nuclear fuel. The noble metal phase was isolated from three commercial irradiated UO fuels by chemically dissolving the UO fuel matrix, leaving the noble metal phase as the undissolved residue. Macro amounts of this residue were dissolved using a KOH + KNO fusion and then chemically separated into individual elements for analysis by mass spectrometry.