Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy analysis of the copper added to gadolinium (Contract research)

Akaoka, Katsuaki ; Maruyama, Yoichiro; Oba, Masaki ; Miyabe, Masabumi   ; Wakaida, Ikuo  

For applying LIBS to the analysis of nuclear fuel materials, it is very important to investigate the analytical method to identify the emission spectrum and its intensity on impurities intermingled within complex emission spectra of matrix elements such as uranium and plutonium. Experiments using gadolinium as simulated sample, in which several 100 ppm of copper was contained, were performed and the analytical performance was estimated. The spectrum was decomposed into each peak of some spectra component on Gd and Cu. And the result, intensity of Cu component intermingled in Gd was determined quantitatively. In order to evaluate the linearity in the impurity analysis, the experiments with various concentration of Cu were carried out. The detection limit was determined to be about 70 ppm from the equivalent noise level which was estimated from the standard deviation in wavelength. The results curried out under the other laser conditions (intensity and wavelength) ware also evaluated.