UK’s First Compact Accelerator Mass Spectrometer

The UK’s first compact Accelerator Mass Spectrometer – cutting-edge equipment capable of measuring trace levels of radioactive elements – has been installed at Lancaster University

The Lancaster Accelerator Mass Spectrometer (AMS) is used primarily to measure trace amounts of nuclear material in samples for environmental, decommissioning and forensic purposes. Measurements are fast and require only very small sample sizes, even for trace elements, allowing the safe and rapid analysis of isotopes either too scarce or too active to measure radiometrically.

The spectrometer, which is one of only two machines of its type worldwide, operated by Lancaster’s nuclear engineering researchers, is available to the whole UK nuclear fission research community.

The £3.6 million investment – which includes £2.8 million from the Engineering and Physical Sciences and Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation – has been operational from 2022. It is used to assess and research trace levels of radioactive elements, particularly the actinides, in samples from around the UK’s nuclear facilities.

Actinides are used and produced in nuclear reactors and are among the heaviest known elements. This equipment enables researchers to estimate levels of the actinide elements in the natural environment and can discriminate them from natural sources, residues from nuclear weapons testing, or nuclear incidents such as Chernobyl or Fukushima.

The spectrometer promises to lower the cost of decommissioning nuclear sites by reducing the area that needs to be decontaminated.

Professor Malcolm Joyce, Chair in Nuclear Engineering at Lancaster University, said:

“The compact AMS capability has progressed very significantly in recent years, worldwide, to such an extent that highly-sensitive systems can now be accommodated on university campuses to provide a service to the entire research communities.”

In the past year it has been used to measure actinides in the Lake District, plutonium deposits around Lake Windermere, monitoring uranium and plutonium content in river water near nuclear sites and developing methods to forensically identify the origins of nuclear fuel materials.

The AMS can also be used for non-nuclear applications such as carbon dating.

 

Facts & Figures

  • The spectrometer, which is one of only two machines of its type worldwide is operated by Lancaster’s nuclear engineering researchers and is available to the whole UK nuclear fission research community.
  • It is used to measure trace amounts of nuclear material in samples for environmental, decommissioning and forensic purposes and can be used for carbon dating.
  • The Lancaster spectrometer promises to lower the cost of decommissioning nuclear sites by reducing the area that needs to be decontaminated.

Links