Abstract
The paper reviws a potential role of laser-induced chemistry in the treatment of radioactive solutions. The first part describes the application of laser-induced chemistry to nuclear fuel reprocessing. A major advantage of laser-induced chemical methods is substitution of light energy for quantities of chemical reagents. The laser-induced redox reactions of U, Np, and Pu are of interest for advanced reprocessing. The second part deals with analytical methods of actinide characterization in natural enyironments. Speciation capabilities of different laser spectroscopies are reported with some examples. The methods under discussion are laser-induced photoacoustic spectroscopy, laserinduced thermal lensing spectroscopy, and Doppler electrophoretic light scattering analysis.
