High Purity Americium-241 for Fuel Cycle R&D Program
Previously the U.S. Department of Energy released Am-241 for various applications such as smoke detectors and Am-Be neutron sources for oil wells. At this date there is a shortage of usable, higher purity Am-241 in metal and oxide form available in the United States. Recently, the limited source of Am-241 has been from Russia with production being contracted to existing customers. The shortage has resulted in the price per gram rising dramatically over the last few years. DOE-NE currently has need for high purity Am-241 metal and oxide to fabricate fuel pellets for reactor testing in the Fuel Cycle R&D program. All the available high purity americium has been gathered from within the DOE system of laboratories. However, this is only a fraction of the projected needs of FCRD over the next 10 years. Therefore, FCR&D has proposed extraction and purification concepts to extract Am-241 from a mixed AmO2-PuO2 feedstock stored at the Savannah River Site. The most simple extraction system is based upon high temperature reduction using lanthanum metal with concurrent evaporation and condensation to produce high purity Am metal. Metallic americium has over a four order of magnitude higher vapor pressure than plutonium. Results from small-scale reduction experiments are presented. These results confirm thermodynamic predictions that at 1000 deg C metallic lanthanum reduces both PuO2 and AmO2. Faster kinetics are expected for temperatures up to about 1500 deg C.
- Research Organization:
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE - NE
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC07-05ID14517
- OSTI ID:
- 1023484
- Report Number(s):
- INL/CON-11-21102; TRN: US1104559
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: INMM Annual Meeting,Palm Springs California,07/17/2011,07/21/2011
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
AMERICIUM
AMERICIUM 241
EVAPORATION
FUEL CYCLE
FUEL PELLETS
KINETICS
LANTHANUM
NEUTRON SOURCES
OIL WELLS
OXIDES
PLUTONIUM
PRICES
PRODUCTION
PURIFICATION
SAVANNAH RIVER PLANT
SHORTAGES
SMOKE DETECTORS
TESTING
THERMODYNAMICS
VAPOR PRESSURE
Americium
Extraction
Fuel Cycle R&D