Americium processing at Rocky Flats Plant is described. The americium is recovered from plutonium metal by a pyrochemical process; the resulting molten salt extraction residues must be processed to recover americium. At present the process uses cation exchange with Dowex 50W-X8 resin, This work shows that a macroporous resin, BioRad AG MP-50, has 30 to 50% more capacity and better elution kinetics than Dowex 50W-X8. Two extraction methods, solvent extraction and extraction chromatography with an organophoshorus bidentate, are also described. Americium is effectively decontaminated from magnesium and aluminum, and recovered by these methods
