Development of on-line energy dispersive x-ray fluorescence to monitor actinide-contaminated waste streams

A commercially available on-line energy dispersive x-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) system has been modified for glove-box operations and installed on the Advanced Testing Line for Actinide Separations (ATLAS) at Los Alamos. The goal is to quantitatively monitor actinides and metal impurities in an anion-exchange effluent to obtain near-real-time chemical information. Because of recent compliance issues, metals listed in the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and other low-level radioactive components are also being analyzed. Initial experiments on how preconcentration techniques can be applied to on-line EDXRF measurements for improved detection limits have also been conducted. An overview of these developments is presented in this paper