Transuranium Analytical Lab
The inside of the wet hot cell at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where scientists use nitric acid and columns of silica glass to remove dangerously radioactive material that accrues in neptunium—plutonium's precursor—during shipping from Idaho National Laboratory.
The Transuranium Analytical Laboratory (TAL) group is located within ORNL’s Radiochemical Engineering Development Center (REDC) which serves as the production, storage, and distribution center for the heavy-element research program of the U.S. Department of Energy. The TAL provides uniquely specialized chemical and radiochemical protocols and analyses on a wide variety of products produced by the REDC with special emphasis on the production of transcurium isotopes. Titrations, dissolutions, separations, and dilutions of high activity samples are completed in hot cells and gloveboxes in preparation for analytical radiochemistry determinations completed at the TAL in support of the REDC’s mission. The TAL's radiation measurements includes high- and low -level alpha/beta counting, liquid scintillation counting for beta activities, alpha spectrometry, gamma spectrometry, and gross neutron counting as well as radioisotopes and fission products by ICPMS.
