• Journal of Institute of Convergence Technology
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.47-50
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• 2014

Voloxidation is a process for converting $UO_2$ into $U_3O_8$ while removing some volatile products in spent fuels (SF). Various oxidative gas conditions including air and mixture of Ar and $O_2$ could be adopted for the process. The gas flows into a reactor under high temperature ($>500^{\circ}C$) and components of SF are reacted with the gas. SF is composed of various components such as actinides, lanthanides, and alkali metals. Therefore, it is of significance to understand their behavior during the reactions for process development. However, due to the limit of available experiments, phase diagram analysis should be preceded. TPP diagram is constructed with respect to temperature-pressure-pressure. It shows a stable phase depending on partial pressures of gas components as well as temperature. In this work, we investigated TPP diagrams for actinides, lanthanides and other oxides to determine stable oxide forms under different gas conditions. The results would be used to set up a material balance under a pyroprocessing scheme of SF and compare the gas conditions for the optimization of fission products removal.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.51 no.6
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• pp.700-708
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• 2013

Pyroprocessing has been developed for the purpose of resolving the current spent nuclear fuel management issue and enhancing the recycle of valuable resources. Pyroprocessing has been developed with the dry technologies which are performed under high temperature conditions excluding any aqueous processes. Pyro-processes which are based on the electrochemical principles require pretreatment processes and a voloxidation process is considered as a pretreatment step for an electrolytic reduction process. Various kinds of gas conditions are applicable to the voloxidation process and the understanding of Cs behavior during the process is of importance for the analyses of waste characteristics and heat load on the overall pyroprocessing. In this study, the changes of chemical compounds with the gas conditions were calculated by analyzing gas-solid reaction behavior based on the chemical equilibria on a Cs-Te-O system. $Cs_2TeO_3$ and $Cs_2TeO_4$ were selected after a Tpp diagram analysis and it was confirmed that they are relatively stable under oxidizing atmospheres while it was shown that Cs and Te would be removed by volatilization under reducing atmosphere at a high temperature. This work provided basic data for predicting Cs behavior during the voloxidation process at which compounds are chemically distributed as the first stage in the pyroprocessing and it is expected that the results would be used for setting up material balances and related purposes.