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Latest News
Argonne research aims to improve nuclear fuel recycling and metal recovery
Servis
Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory are investigating a used nuclear fuel recycling technology that could lead to a scaled-down and more efficient approach to metal recovery, according to a recent news article from the lab. The research, led by Argonne radiochemist Anna Servis with funding from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E), could have an impact beyond the nuclear fuel cycle and improve other high-value metal processing, such as rare earth recovery, according to Argonne.
The research: Servis’s work is being carried out under ARPA-E’s CURIE (Converting UNF Radioisotopes Into Energy) program. The specific project—Radioisotope Capture Intensification Using Rotating Packed Bed Contactors—started in 2023 and is scheduled to end in January 2026.
S. A. Musa, D. S. Lee, S. I. Abdel-Khalik, M. Yoda
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 77 | Number 7 | November 2021 | Pages 858-864
Student Paper Competition Selection | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2020.1867475
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A single-finger unit of the Helium-Cooled Modular Divertor with Multiple Jets (HEMJ) with a plasma-facing surface (PFS) area of about 2 cm2 has been studied in a helium (He) loop at He mass flow rates ≤ 8 g/s and nearly prototypical conditions. Based on previous studies of the single finger of the HEMJ, our Georgia Institute of Technology group is planning to experimentally study larger divertors. Given that the HEMJ test section was heated with an induction heater and that it is impractical to scale this up to divertors with larger PFS areas, a reversed heat flux approach is being considered to measure heat transfer coefficients (HTCs). In this approach, the direction of the heat flux is reversed with water cooling and high-temperature He heating of the outer shell attached to the PFS.
This work presents an initial experimental and numerical evaluation of this approach for a single HEMJ finger. Experiments with brass and copper-chromium-zirconium outer shells were conducted at dimensionless He mass flow rates or Reynolds numbers Re = 1 × 104 to 4.7 × 104, an inlet pressure of 10 MPa, temperatures as great as 673 K, and maximum heat flux of 8.4 MW/m2. The experiments verify that the He-side HTCs are independent of the direction of the heat flux. The results agree well with previous Nusselt number correlation and pressure loss coefficients for the HEMJ obtained using the normal heating approach.