Electrometallurgical treatment of metallic spent nuclear fuel stored at the Hanford Site
The major component of the DOE spent nuclear fuel inventory is the metallic fuel stored at the Hanford site in the southeastern part of the state of Washington. Most of this fuel was discharged from the N-Reactor; a small part of the inventory is fuel from the early Hanford production reactors. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) plans to remove these fuels from the spent fuel storage pools in which they are presently stored, dry them, and place them in interim storage at a location at the Hanford site that is far removed from the Columbia River. It is not yet certain that these fuels will be acceptable for disposal in a mined geologic repository without further treatment, due to their potential pyrophoric character. A practical method for treatment of the Hanford metallic spent fuel, based on an electrorefining process, has been developed and has been demonstrated with unirradiated N-Reactor fuel and with simulated single-pass reactor (SPR) spent fuel. The process can be operated with any desired throughput rates; being a batch process, it is simply a matter of setting the size of the electrorefiner modules and the number of such modules. A single module, prototypic of a production-scale module, has been fabricated and testing is in progress at a throughput rate of 150 kg (heavy metal) per day. The envisioned production version would incorporate additional anode baskets and cathode tubes and provide a throughput rate of 333 kgHM/day. A system with four of these modules would permit treatment of Hanford metallic fuels at a rate of at least 250 metric tons per year.
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-31109-ENG-38
- OSTI ID:
- 231931
- Report Number(s):
- ANL/CMT/CP-89922; CONF-9606116-43; CONF-960804-19; ON: DE96010801; TRN: 96:012833
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Annual meeting of the American Nuclear Society (ANS), Reno, NV (United States); Seattle, WA (United States), 16-20 Jun 1996; 18-23 Aug 1996; Other Information: PBD: 1996
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Electrometallurgical treatment of oxide spent fuel - engineering-scale development.
Radiolytic and Thermal Processes Relevant to Dry Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuels