Chemical behavior of antimony and tellurium fission products in aqueous solutions

The oxidation states of antimony and tellurium fission products formed in the aqueous solutions of²³³U and²³⁵U irradiated in a reactor were studied by means of anion exchange method. Results were corrected for the thermal reactions such as radiation induced reactions using double tracers for each element. In hot reactions, the isotopes formed independently by fission take their reduced states almost completely, whereas the isotopes formed by β-decay of their precursors favor their oxidized states. The fractions of the tellurium isotopes in the oxidized state depend on the β-decay energy of their precursors, whereas those of the antimony isotopes are nearly constant irrespective of the β-decay energy. The different behaviors between those two elements would reflect the chemical properties of their precursors.