Plutonium aerosols might be generated in nuclear weapon testing and nuclear reactor accidents. The particle size of Pu-aerosols varies greatly, depending on the mode of formation. The plutonium aerosol chemistry plays an important role in the nuclear trial data treatment, the nuclear weapon spreading, the nuclear forensic analysis, the nuclear safeguards, and the nuclear power demands. This paper reviews the physic-chemical behavior development of plutonium aerosols at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Argonne National Laboratories (ANL) and Idaho National Laboratories (INL). The development includes the aerosol characterization, the aerodynamic size distribution, the residence time, the instrumentation analysis, the aerosol collection and sampling, and the formation mechanism. It is shown that we have only limited data of plutonium aerosols in different situations, and the experimental verification is still a challenging problem.

plutonium aerosols  /  particle size  /  source term  /  American national laboratories