Current status of fluoride volatility method development

Conference · Mon Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 2013

OSTI ID:22264126

Uhlir, J.; Marecek, M.; Skarohlid, J. ^[1]

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1. UJV - Nuclear Research Institute, Research Centre Rez, CZ-250 68 Husinec - Rez 130 (Czech Republic)

The Fluoride Volatility Method is based on a separation process, which comes out from the specific property of uranium, neptunium and plutonium to form volatile hexafluorides whereas most of fission products (mainly lanthanides) and higher transplutonium elements (americium, curium) present in irradiated fuel form nonvolatile tri-fluorides. Fluoride Volatility Method itself is based on direct fluorination of the spent fuel, but before the fluorination step, the removal of cladding material and subsequent transformation of the fuel into a powdered form with a suitable grain size have to be done. The fluorination is made with fluorine gas in a flame fluorination reactor, where the volatile fluorides (mostly UF{sub 6}) are separated from the non-volatile ones (trivalent minor actinides and majority of fission products). The subsequent operations necessary for partitioning of volatile fluorides are the condensation and evaporation of volatile fluorides, the thermal decomposition of PuF{sub 6} and the finally distillation and sorption used for the purification of uranium product. The Fluoride Volatility Method is considered to be a promising advanced pyrochemical reprocessing technology, which can mainly be used for the reprocessing of oxide spent fuels coming from future GEN IV fast reactors.

• Research Organization: American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
• OSTI ID: 22264126
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS
21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
AMERICIUM
CURIUM
DISTILLATION
FAST REACTORS
FISSION PRODUCTS
FLUORINATION
FLUORINE
NEPTUNIUM
OXIDES
PLUTONIUM
PLUTONIUM FLUORIDES
PYROCHEMICAL REPROCESSING
RARE EARTHS
SPENT FUELS
URANIUM
URANIUM HEXAFLUORIDE
VOLATILITY