CHEMICAL FEASIBILITY OF HOMOGENEOUS NEUTRON POISONS FOR CRITICALITY CONTROLS IN CONSOLIDATED EDISON FUEL PROCESSING SOLUTIONS

Technical Report · Fri Apr 01 04:00:00 EST 1960

OSTI ID:4175579

Moore, J G; Rainey, R H

Laboratory experiments demonstrated the apparent chemical feasibility of incorporating boron, cadmium, or rare earth salts as nuclear poisons for criticality control during the processing of Consolidated Edison reactor fuel. At room temperature up to 18 g of boric acid dissolved per liter of clad or core dissolver solution, i.e., 0.3 M in decladding solution (6 M H/sub 2/SO/sub 4/) and 0.3 M in Thorex dissolvent (13 M HNO/sub 3/---0.04 M F---0.1 M Al(NO/sub 3/)/ sub 3/. Boric acid had no apparent effect on the dissolution of the stainless steel jacket or ThO/sub 2/-UO/sub 2/ core. At room temperature cadmium solubility in 6 M H/sub 2/SO/sub 4/ was 0.3 M and in Thorex dissolvent was>1 M. Gadolinum-samarium mixtures dissolved at concentrations up to 5 g/liter without difficulty. None of these neutron poisons were volatilized to a significant extent (i.e., <6%) during evaporation for feed adjustment. Single solvent extraction cycles were made in which the concentrations of boron, rare earths, and cadmium in the uranium were reduced to 2.5, <4, and <17 ppm, respectively. (auth)

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab., Tenn.
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-26
• NSA Number: NSA-14-012645
• OSTI ID: 4175579
• Report Number(s): ORNL-2854
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

ALUMINUM NITRATES
BORON
CADMIUM
CHEMISTRY
CONTROL SYSTEMS
EVAPORATION
FLUORINE
FUEL SOLUTIONS
GADOLINIUM
MINERAL ACIDS
MIXING
NEUTRONS
NITRIC ACID
NUCLEAR REACTIONS
POISONING
QUANTITY RATIO
RARE EARTHS
REACTOR CORE
REACTORS
REPROCESSING
SALTS
SAMARIUM
SEPARATION PROCESSES
SOLUBILITY
SOLUTIONS
SOLVENT EXTRACTION
STAINLESS STEELS
SULFURIC ACID
TEMPERATURE
THOREX PROCESS
THORIUM OXIDES
URANIUM DIOXIDE