Solubility of uranium at very low concentration in RAFM steel

In this work we present the results to develop standards of reduced activation ferritic–martensitic (RAFM) alloys for the quantitative determination of uranium in these materials. The results show that a very low efficiency can be obtained during alloying of uranium due to the segregation to the slags. The solubility of U can be increased by adding small quantities of Sn but the use of U intermetallics as raw materials do not provide any improvement. The detection limit of U in RAFM alloys using particle induced X-ray emission is also reported.