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Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Spent fuel transfer project completed at INL
Work crews at Idaho National Laboratory have transferred 40 spent nuclear fuel canisters into long-term storage vaults, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has reported.
Leonard W. Gray
Nuclear Technology | Volume 52 | Number 1 | January 1981 | Pages 66-72
Technical Paper | Chemical Processing | doi.org/10.13182/NT81-A32690
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Plutonium metal dissolves readily in sulfamic acid; the dissolution rate is a function of surface area, sulfamic acid concentration, and temperature. Below a temperature of ∼ 50°C, the dissolution mechanism appears to proceed through a PuH2 intermediate that yields a pyrophoric sludge. Above a temperature of ∼60°C, neither the intermediate nor the sludge forms unless the sulfamic acid concentration drops below 0.4 M. Overall dissolution rates of 400 to 500 g Pu/h are obtainable with typical plutonium buttons. Downstream processing requires conversion of the sulfamate to a nitrate medium. Approximately 90% of the residual sulfamate ion can be precipitated as sulfamic acid by the addition of two volumes of 72% HNO3 to one volume of the plutonium sulfamate-sulfamic acid solution if the solution is chilled to -10°C. The small amount of sulfamate remaining can be oxidized either by diluting the nitric acid to ∼3 M and irradiating the solution with ultraviolet light or by diluting the solution with pre-irradiated 3 M HNO3.