Development of Chlorination Process for Cladding Hull Waste and its Combination with Pyroprocessing

Journal Article · Wed Jun 15 04:00:00 EDT 2016 · Transactions of the American Nuclear Society

OSTI ID:22991867

Jeon, Min Ku; Hur, Jin-Mok; Ahn, Do-Hee ^[1]

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1. Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, 989-111 Daedeok-daero, Yuseong-gu, 34059 Daejeon, (Korea, Republic of)

The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) is spending efforts to minimize the amount of radioactive wastes generated during pyro-processing. One of the major issues is management of cladding hull waste owing to its large amount (25 wt.% of fuel) and high radioactivity. Although the cladding hull waste might be classified as an intermediate-level waste according to the Korean regulation, the large amount makes it reasonable to develop a way to reduce the amount of cladding hull waste. Previously performed radioactivation analysis results revealed that selective recovery of zirconium from the cladding hull waste will produce a weak beta-decaying zirconium. As a means of selective Zr recovery, KAERI is working on a chlorination process which employs a chemical reaction between metallic zirconium and chlorine gas. The chlorination process generates zirconium tetrachloride (ZrCl{sub 4}) which sublimes at 331 deg. C leading to an easy separation from other radioactive nuclides. KAERI has started the chlorination process R and D with small quartz reactors with grams of cladding hulls, and now its work is proceeded to fundamental approaches and scale-up. In this work, the progress achieved by KAERI on the chlorination process is reviewed and a recent approach to combine the chlorination process with pyro-processing, so-called MKZP (Min Ku Zirconium Process) is introduced. (authors)

• OSTI ID: 22991867
• Journal Information: Transactions of the American Nuclear Society, Journal Name: Transactions of the American Nuclear Society Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 114; ISSN 0003-018X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS
BETA DECAY
CHLORINATION
CLADDING
INTERMEDIATE-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTES
ISOTOPES
KAERI
MATERIALS RECOVERY
NUCLEAR FUELS
QUARTZ
RADIOACTIVATION
RADIOACTIVITY
REGULATIONS
ZIRCONIUM
ZIRCONIUM CARBONATES