History and status of spent fuel treatment at the INL Fuel Conditioning Facility

Fredrickson, Guy L.; Patterson, M. N.; Vaden, D.; Galbreth, G.G.; Yoo, Tae-Sic; Price, John C.; Flynn, Eric J.; Searle, Ryan N.

doi:10.1016/j.pnucene.2021.104037

Cited by 18 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 77 publications

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“…The electrometallurgical processing technology was proposed by ANL to address the treatment of all US Department of Energy spent fuels (National Research Council 2000;Fredrickson et al 2022). Although reprocessing of nuclear fuel is not currently implemented in the United States, it is covered in this work as a basis for code demonstration for closed fuel cycles.…”

Section: Criticality Event/fissile Materials Buildup During Reprocessingmentioning

confidence: 99%

SCALE Demonstration for Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor Fuel Cycle Analysis

Haranto,

Radulescu,

Bostelmann

et al. 2024

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Section: Criticality Event/fissile Materials Buildup During Reprocessingmentioning

confidence: 99%

SCALE Demonstration for Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor Fuel Cycle Analysis

Haranto,

Radulescu,

Bostelmann

et al. 2024

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“…Mark-IV ER was used to treat the used metallic fuels such as U-10Zr used in the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II) [2,11]. The electrolyte used in SOF-ER and Mark-IV ER is LiCl-KCl-UCl 3 salt.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The electrolyte used in SOF-ER and Mark-IV ER is LiCl-KCl-UCl 3 salt. Details about the pyroprocessing of spent oxide fuels and EBR-II fuels can be found elsewhere [1,11,12]. Because the fuels processed by the two ERs differ significantly, different levels of fission products accumulated in the vessels during the operations of the two ERs over the years; therefore, these salts could be considered good candidates for understanding the effects of fission products on the molten salt mass measurement by RTD and gamma spectroscopy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gamma-ray spectra analyses of molten salts in spent nuclear fuels pyroprocessing facilities for mass measurement

Cao

Larson

Storms

et al. 2022

J Radioanal Nucl Chem

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To evaluate radioactive tracer dilution and gamma spectroscopy as a safeguards technique for monitoring the mass of liquid salt in molten salt systems, the gamma spectroscopy data of salt samples from the pyroprocessing facilities in Idaho National Laboratory were acquired and analyzed. The primary focus is the uncertainty analysis of the gamma radioactivity of 154 Eu isotope in the molten salts. The facilities include an electrorefiner for pyroprocessing spent oxide fuels (SOF-ER) and Mark-IV ER for processing the metallic fuels from Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II). The relative gamma radioactivity uncertainty was consistently at 3% for 137 Cs for both Mark-IV ER and SOF-ER salts. However, for 154 Eu, it was 8% for SOF-ER salt and 7% for Mark-IV ER salt. The main reason for the higher uncertainty for 154 Eu is believed to be the lower counting statistics in gamma spectroscopy. To improve the gamma radioactivity uncertainty of isotope 154 Eu, a longer data acquisition time (12 hours instead of 4 hours) and a 2 higher count rate gamma detector for gamma spectroscopy were tested and it was found that the uncertainty for 154 Eu was significantly improved from 7% or 8% to 3%.

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“…[2][3][4] However, the growth of uranium dendrites, the inhomogeneous electrodeposition of uranium on the solid cathode, induces short-circuit risk, decreases current efficiency, and mixes molten salt in the recovered uranium. [5][6][7] Therefore, it is important to study the growth mechanism and the control of uranium dendrites for the engineering application of electrorefining.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Phase-Field Modelling and Morphological Classification of Uranium Dendrites for the Electrorefining of Used Nuclear Fuel

Zhao¹,

Yan²,

Jiang³

et al. 2023

J. Electrochem. Soc.

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Electrorefining is an important unit operation for the pyroprocessing of used nuclear fuel; however, the uncontrolled growth of uranium dendrites on the cathode is hindering its engineering application. In this study, the phase-field modelling is applied to the study of the growth of uranium dendrites using the finite element method, and the fractal dimension and the perimeter-to-area ratio are employed to classify quantitatively the morphologies of uranium dendrites. It is shown that uranium dendrites can form sprout-like, fishbone-like, and tree-like morphologies, and the effects of anisotropic strength, symmetry index, overpotential, and temperature to the morphologies of uranium dendrites are discussed. It is concluded that the diffusion of uranium cations (diffusion rate-controlling) in molten salt and the electrode kinetics (kinetic rate-controlling) are the two rate-controlling steps for the electrodeposition of uranium, and the diffusion rate-controlling mechanism is responsible for the growth of complicated dendritic morphologies.

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History and status of spent fuel treatment at the INL Fuel Conditioning Facility

Cited by 18 publications

References 77 publications

SCALE Demonstration for Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor Fuel Cycle Analysis

SCALE Demonstration for Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor Fuel Cycle Analysis

Gamma-ray spectra analyses of molten salts in spent nuclear fuels pyroprocessing facilities for mass measurement

Phase-Field Modelling and Morphological Classification of Uranium Dendrites for the Electrorefining of Used Nuclear Fuel

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