Retention of radionuclides in sol-gel surrogate nuclear explosive debris

Sol-gel vitrification can be used to rapidly produce solid, vitreous materials to support nuclear forensics research. This work investigates three sol-gel synthetic approaches' ability to retain fission products within the glass as a function of drying temperature. Eight of the ten fission products studied were quantitatively retained (less than 5% losses) at temperatures up to 600 °C for glasses prepared using an acidic catalyst and at temperatures up to 300 °C for glasses prepared using a basic catalyst. Both systems show partial loss of ruthenium and complete loss of iodine at temperatures above 300 and 100 °C, respectively. (author)