LAUSR

Determination of nitrogen content in the uranium metal and uranium oxide based reactor fuels is important to meet the requirement of specifications given by fuel designer. Therefore, a systematic study was carried out to determine the variations in nitrogen content during the conversion of ammonium diuranate (ADU) to uranium oxides (UO3 and UO2), and finally to uranium metal by inert gas fusion-thermal conductivity detection (IGF-TCD) technique. To understand the measured nitrogen content variations, the thermal decomposition study of ADU was carried out using thermogravimetry (TG)/differential thermogravimetry (DTG) and differential thermal analysis (DTA) in the temperature range of 25–1073 K. Powder X–ray diffraction (XRD) technique was used to confirm the formation of uranium oxide precursors at different temperature.