Recovery of the actinides by electrochemical methods in molten chlorides using solid aluminium cathode

Conference · Sun Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 2007

OSTI ID:20979667

Malmbeck, R; Mendes, E; Serp, J; Soucek, P; Glatz, J P ^[1]; Cassayre, L ^[2]

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1. European Commission, JRC, Institute for Transuranium Elements, Postfach 2340, 76125 Karlsruhe (Germany)
2. Laboratoire de Genie Chimique - LGC, Universite Paul Sabatier, UMR 5503, 118 route de Narbonne, 31062 Toulouse Cedex 04 (France)

An electrorefining process in molten chloride salts is being developed at ITU to reprocess the spent nuclear fuel. According to the thermochemical properties of the system, aluminium is the most promising electrode material for the separation of actinides (An) from lanthanides (Ln). The actinides are selectively reduced from the fission products and stabilized by the formation of solid and compact actinide-aluminium alloys with the reactive cathode material. In this work, the maximum loading of aluminium with actinides was investigated by potentiostatic and galvano-static electrorefining of U-Pu- Zr alloys. A very high aluminium capacity was achieved, as the average loading was 1.6 g of U and Pu into 1 g of aluminium and the maximum achieved loading was 2.3 g. For recovery of the actinides from aluminium, a process based on chlorination and a subsequent sublimation of AlCl{sub 3} is proposed. (authors)

• Research Organization: American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
• OSTI ID: 20979667
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS
ACTINIDES
ALUMINIUM
ALUMINIUM ALLOYS
ALUMINIUM CHLORIDES
CAPACITY
CATHODES
ELECTROCHEMISTRY
ELECTROREFINING
FISSION PRODUCTS
MOLTEN SALTS
RARE EARTHS
SPENT FUELS