Capabilities and Research Areas
Radiological Laboratory
This research focuses in three areas:
- separation of actinides from lanthanides in highly alkaline high-level radioactive waste;
- separation of actinides in highly acidic dissolved nuclear fuel as part of a closed cycle processing of fuel for nuclear power; and
- separation, detection and measurements of trace quantities of specific chemical species.
In particular, FIU is:
- Studying fundamental chemistry of uranium, americium and technetium in soils;
- Developing new ligands for chemical separations actinides and lanthanides in highly acidic solutions for nuclear fuel reprocessing and in highly alkaline radioactive waste solutions for treatment;
- Making nuclear measurements via alpha, beta and gamma spectroscopy instruments and techniques to better understand:
- long-term fate and transport of radionuclides in the soil and groundwater after treatment with humic acid or base injections to increase pH to precipitate stable forms of the radionuclides;
- atmospheric transport and pollutant deposition via measurements of cosmogenic radionuclides in atmospheric aerosols and
- transport of pollutants in the marine environment.
The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and ARC are collaborating in these research areas. See the below fact sheets for the Radiological Laboratory at ARC and the FIU Interdisciplinary Nuclear Research Program.
Collaborators
Fifty-five faculty and staff are members of FIU’s Interdisciplinary Nuclear Research Program. Key Ph.D. FIU researchers in the nuclear separations focus areas include: Konstantinos Kavallieratos, Christopher Dares, Yelena Katsenovich, Ines Triay, Vasileios Anagnostopoulos, Ievgen Govor, Hilary Emerson, Ravi Gudavalli, and David Roelant.
External Collaborators include: Savannah River National Laboratory; Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; Los Alamos National Laboratory; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Canberra, Cabrera Radiological Services; Permafix; Florida State University; AREVA Inc; Univ. of Michigan; ISM Solutions Inc.; Hitachi; Univ. of Tennessee; Westinghouse; Argonne National Laboratory; NextEra Energy; Florida Power & Light; Idaho National Laboratory; The ND2 Group LLC; Duke Energy; and Southern Nuclear.
