Separation of radiochemically pure ¹⁰⁶Ru for use in eye applicators

High Level Liquid Waste (HLLW) generated from PUREX process contains many useful fission products along with the unrecovered actinides. Among the several fission products ¹⁰⁶Ru is one of the most important beta emitter. The source made from this radionuclide is used as an eye applicator for treatment of ophthalmic tumor. It is an ISO recommended â source for calibration of personal dosimeters and other radiation monitoring instruments. Separation of radio-chemically pure ¹⁰⁶Ru from PUREX-HLLW is one of the most challenging tasks for separation scientists due to its variable valency and formation of several species under different chemical conditions. Earlier, we proposed a scheme for its separation and purification from ion-exchange effluent streams of PUREX process used for final plutonium purification. Very scarce data are available in the literature for the separation of radio chemically pure ^106Ru from PUREX-HLLW. In view of this, experiments were carried out to separate radio-chemically pure ¹⁰⁶Ru from PUREX-HLLW. Multi step technique involving ion-exchange and solvent extraction was adopted for this purpose