α radiolysis of aqueous solutions of nitric acid and plutonium

The treatment of nuclear fuels, in particular the separation of uranium and plutonium, relies on modifications of the degrees of oxidation of actinides in solution. The efficiency of the process depends on a perfect control of these modifications. This article presents a study of the redox behavior of plutonium in aqueous nitric acid solution under the effect of radiolysis-α, partly due to its own radioactive decay. The first step of this work quantified the formation of the major products in solution, H₂O₂ and HNO₂, from radiolysis of the nitric acid medium. A second step tends to show that it is still difficult to directly correlate the redox behavior of plutonium to only the effects induced on the medium but that the specific redox reactivity of plutonium must also be taken into account