Microsystems in the service of green analytical chemistry for the nuclear industry

The miniaturization of analytical devices offers, for the nuclear field, new perspectives for the security, optimization and diversification of processes (reduction of material transport, reduction of stored quantities, energy saving, reaction conditions inaccessible to macroscopic reactors...). This reduced scale satisfies most of the criteria of green analytical chemistry, as well as the principle of minimizing the risks and nuisances associated with radioactive samples, by a very significant reduction in the quantities of samples, reagents, waste generated by the installations, analysis time and by automation. A growing number of developments of specific microsystems or 'laboratories on a chip' are being carried out in this sense, in particular for the purification and separation of radionuclides, and for their measurements in complex and difficult to handle samples. This article proposes to illustrate the development of analytical microsystems applied to isotopic, elemental and speciation analysis problems encountered in the nuclear industry, and to underline the main challenges that remain