Uranium assay requirements of nuclear accountability and safeguards

Nuclear materials safeguards have spurred the development of faster, cheaper, and more reliable methods for the assay of uranium materials in the nuclear fuel cycle. These requirements have been met by an elegantly simple method suitable for both manual and automated operation. Dissolution of some samples remains a vexing problem, but some advances in this area are being made. Intra-and interlaboratory control programs are necessary to maintain the highest possible reliability of the analytical results.