DEVELOPMENT AND DEPLOYMENT OF VACUUM SALT DISTILLATION AT THE SAVANNAH RIVER SITE

Conference · Thu Oct 28 04:00:00 EDT 2010

OSTI ID:992628

Pierce, R; Pak, D; Edwards, T

The Savannah River Site has a mission to dissolve fissile materials and disposition them. The primary fissile material is plutonium dioxide (PuO{sub 2}). To support dissolution of these materials, the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) designed and demonstrated a vacuum salt distillation (VSD) apparatus using both representative radioactive samples and non-radioactive simulant materials. Vacuum salt distillation, through the removal of chloride salts, increases the quantity of materials suitable for processing in the site's HB-Line Facility. Small-scale non-radioactive experiments at 900-950 C show that >99.8 wt % of the initial charge of chloride salt distilled from the sample boat with recovery of >99.8 wt % of the ceric oxide (CeO{sub 2}) - the surrogate for PuO{sub 2} - as a non-chloride bearing 'product'. Small-scale radioactive testing in a glovebox demonstrated the removal of sodium chloride (NaCl) and potassium chloride (KCl) from 13 PuO{sub 2} samples. Chloride concentrations were distilled from a starting concentration of 1.8-10.8 wt % to a final concentration <500 mg/kg chloride. Initial testing of a non-radioactive, full-scale production prototype is complete. A designed experiment evaluated the impact of distillation temperature, time at temperature, vacuum, product depth, and presence of a boat cover. Significant effort has been devoted to mechanical considerations to facilitate simplified operation in a glovebox.

• Research Organization: SRS
• Sponsoring Organization: DOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC09-08SR22470
• OSTI ID: 992628
• Report Number(s): SRNL-STI-2010-00484
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE WASTES FROM NUCLEAR FACILITIES
DISSOLUTION
DISTILLATION EQUIPMENT
GLOVEBOXES
PLUTONIUM DIOXIDE
POTASSIUM CHLORIDES
RADIOACTIVE WASTE PROCESSING
REMOVAL
SAVANNAH RIVER PLANT
SODIUM CHLORIDES
TESTING
VACUUM DISTILLATION