Electrometallurgical treatment of oxide spent fuel - engineering-scale development.
Conference
·
OSTI ID:10751
Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) has developed the electrometallurgical treatment process for conditioning various Department of Energy (DOE) spent fuel types for long-term storage or disposal. This process uses electrorefining to separate the constituents of spent fuel into three product streams: metallic uranium, a metal waste form containing the cladding and noble metal fission products, and a ceramic waste form containing the transuranics, and rare earth, alkali, and alkaline earth fission products. While metallic fuels can be directly introduced into the electrorefiner, the actinide components of oxide fuels must first be reduced to the metallic form. The Chemical Technology Division of AFT has developed a process to reduce the actinide oxides that uses lithium at 650 C in the presence of molten LiCl, yielding the actinide metals and Li{sub 2}O. A significant amount of work has already been accomplished to investigate the basic chemistry of the lithium reduction process and to demonstrate its applicability to the treatment of light-water reactor- (LWR-) type spent fuel. The success of this work has led to conceptual plans to construct a pilot-scale oxide reduction facility at ANL's Idaho site. In support of the design effort, a series of laboratory- and engineering-scale experiments is being conducted using simulated fuel. These experiments have focused on the engineering issues associated with scaling-up the process and proving compatibility between the reduction and electrorefining steps. Specific areas of investigation included reduction reaction kinetics, evaluation of various fuel basket designs, and issues related to electrorefining the reduced product. This paper summarizes the results of these experiments and outlines plans for future work.
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Lab., IL (US)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- US Department of Energy (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-31109-ENG-38
- OSTI ID:
- 10751
- Report Number(s):
- ANL/ER/CP-96212
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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