HALEU Decontamination Investigations for EBR-II Recovered Uranium. HALEU Drip Casting Results in the Fuel Conditioning Facility Cathode Processor
Many of the new advanced reactor designs being proposed by the nuclear private sector require uranium fuel enriched between 5 and 20%, otherwise known as High Assay Low Enriched Uranium (HALEU), to support their designs. There are currently no commercial facilities based in the United States which have the capability to produce this material, and as a result the nuclear industry has requested support from the Department of Energy (DOE) to meet this need. One approach being considered by DOE to respond to this demand is to recover highly enriched uranium from used nuclear fuels and downblend it to enrichments less than 20 % U-235. DOE’s past research related to liquid metal fast breeder reactors resulted in the irradiation of more than 3 metric tons (MT) of nuclear fuel composed of highly enriched metallic uranium which resides at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). This inventory of used nuclear fuel is currently being conditioned using an electrometallurgical treatment process (EMT) to facilitate its eventual disposition to a geologic repository. As part of this treatment process, the highly enriched component of this used fuel is separated, recovered, downblended to <20% U-235, and stored as a metallic uranium ingot. The majority of this fuel was irradiated in the Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR-II) over the course of its 30 years of operation. This sodium cooled fast reactor utilized a core composed of highly enriched, sodium-bonded, metallic fuel to sustain or “drive” the reactor. This EBR-II driver fuel is currently being treated for sodium neutralization in the Fuel Conditioning Facility (FCF) at the Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) and the metallic uranium recovered as a component of this process has been proposed as a potential source of supply of high assay low enriched uranium. The irradiation of the metallic uranium fuel results in the creation of fission products and some minor actinides which are not compatible with many reuse scenario’s, and introduces significant challenges associated with fabrication of new fuel elements using this material. However, it is believed that the current EMT process can be slightly enhanced to address these concerns and result in the recovery of a product that can be considered as a source of supply for HALEU applications. Based on this, DOE requested the INL research methods to enhance the EMT process to produce a recovered uranium material that has a lower contaminant level and lower radiological dose rate and could be utilized in glovebox based fuel fabrication scenarios. The report that follows documents the progress toward meeting this goal.
- Research Organization:
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC07-05ID14517
- OSTI ID:
- 1503291
- Report Number(s):
- INL/EXT-19-53191-Rev000
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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