Fig. 4.

Comparison of AWE’s (a) standard operating procedure for Pa separations on pure U metals [25] and (b) the modified procedure for depleted U–Nb alloys. The columns are Rockbourne R1010 medium columns and are stacked on top of a vacuum-assisted flow chamber. The red color of the eluates represents solutions of purified Pa, the element of interest. This procedure has also been successfully executed using pre-packed resin cartridges. To highlight the differences between the two procedures, certain steps such as resin cleaning, column conditioning, and acid washes have been abridged or omitted from this schematic; please refer to the Higginson et al. (2018) [25] and the Supplementary Materials for complete descriptions of the standard and modified procedures