An optical fiber cable is designed, characterized, and applied to the remote spectrometric analysis of alkali elements as impurities in plutonium by dc arc emission. The analytical performance of the dc arc/optical fiber/polychromator system is tested by the establishment of analytical working curves for sodium, potassium, and rubidium from a set of standards. Accuracy, determined by the use of control samples of known concentration, is found to be 10% or better. The new analytical system provides improvement in both accuracy and efficiency compared to the previously used spectrographic technique.
