Its ability to dissolve certain metals selectively or be a solvent for many metal salts makes it useful in gold parting processes.

Depending on the amount of nitrogen dioxide present, fuming nitric acid is further characterized as red fuming nitric acid at concentrations above 86%, or white fuming nitric acid at concentrations above 95%.

Nitric acid plays a key role in PUREX and other nuclear fuel reprocessing methods, where it can dissolve many different actinides. The resulting nitrates are converted to various complexes that can be reacted and extracted selectively in order to separate...