Characteristics of metallic uranium aerosols generated under fire conditions
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Radioactive aerosol will enter the human body through the respiratory system, digestive system and other ways, seriously endangering human health. At present, there are few public reports on the generation of uranium aerosol under combustion conditions, and the experimental conditions in the existing reports differ greatly, resulting in limited reference significance. Therefore, a set of uranium aerosol experiment equipment is designed in this work, and the formation characteristics of two kinds of metallic uranium aerosol under fire conditions are studied. Thus, the information on the particle size distribution, RF (Respirable Fraction), ARF (Airborne Release Fraction) of uranium aerosols was obtained. The results indicate that particle size of two uranium aerosols exhibited log-normal and bimodal distributions, respectively, while the RF values were similar and close to 1 in both cases. The ARF values for combustion products with different compositions exhibited a high degree of similarity. Based on our experiments and literature data, the results suggests that the particle size distribution of uranium aerosols is influenced by the composition and structure of the material significantly, and the ARF is impacted by the specific surface area of the materials.
Source: Nuclear Engineering and Design
Authors: Min Zhu, Ming Guo, Yanjun Wang, Zhaoqun Shao
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,710
Funder: Naval University of Engineering
OpenAlex ID: W4409092185