Research Progress of Inorganic Mass Spectrometry Applied to Analysis of Nuclear Elements from High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor and Its Spent Fuel

At the preliminary stage of mass spectrometry (MS) technology development, it was mainly applied to determine the nuclear industry related inorganic isotope abundance. With the rapid development of nuclear industry, MS has been employed to analyze the impurities in nuclear fuel and nuclear materials, burnup of nuclear fuels, and nuclides from high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR). The study mainly discussed the basic principles, application, and the research method’s advantages and disadvantages of inorganic mass spectrometry applied to analysis of tritium from HTGR, trace amounts of plutonium and neptunium and ¹⁴C in its spent fuel. The application and R&D status of gas isotope mass spectrometer (GIMS), inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICP-MS), laser resonance ionization mass spectrometry (LRIMS), and accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) at domestic and abroad were introduced, and problems of the instruments, application and development tendency were pointed out. The low resolution GIMS has the disadvantages of strict conditions, limited scope of application, and complex error during the analysis of hydrogen isotopes, while the high resolution GIMS is overcome the disadvantages of low resolution GIMS, and able to realize the rapid and accurate analysis with low determinative error. However, high resolution GIMS is embargoed due to the special military applications, and need to independently develop it by China. The disadvantages of ICP-MS such as poor anti-interference performance, low resolution, analyze by destroy the simple, and severe inhibition effects for space charge leads its low accuracy, which limit the application in nuclear field. Although there are prominent advantages for LRIMS, it still has poor reproducibility of laser source as one of laser MS, and need further research. China is developing rapidly in import and independent R&D of AMS, but there are many problems in the spent fuel and other nuclear industry related application and R&D field, such as low sensitivity and limited determination of special or several nuclides. The main application of AMS with gas ion source is determination of ¹⁴C, and the sensitivity reaches to 10-16. Until now, the R&D of gas ion source for AMS hasn’t be reported in China. This study discussed future developing direction of relevant mass spectrometry and outlined the potential solutions. In order to improve the efficiency of MS application on HTGR research, it is urgent to develop the easy operating intelligent instruments with small volume and simple structure.