• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.459-482
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• 2006

A geochemical approach to the long-term safety of waste disposal is discussed in connection with the significance of actinides, which shall deliver the major radioactivity inventory subsequent to the relatively short-term decay of fission products. Every power reactor generates transuranic (TRU) elements: plutonium and minor actinides (Np, Am, Cm), which consist chiefly of long-lived nuclides emitting alpha radiation. The amount of TRU actinides generated in a fuel life period is found to be relatively small (about 1 wt% or less in spent fuel) but their radioactivity persists many hundred thousands years. Geological confinement of waste containing TRU actinides demands, as a result, fundamental knowledge on the geochemical behavior of actinides in the repository environment for a long period of time. Appraisal of the scientific progress in this subject area is the main objective of the present paper. Following the introductory discussion on natural radioactivities, the nuclear fuel cycle is briefly brought up with reference to actinide generation and waste disposal. As the long-term disposal safety concerns inevitably with actinides, the significance of the aquatic actinide chemistry is summarized in two parts: the fundamental properties relevant to their aquatic behavior and the geochemical reactions in nanoscopic scale. The constrained space of writing allows discussion on some examples only, for which topics of the primary concern are selected, e.g. apparent solubility and colloid generation, colloid-facilitated migration, notable speciation of such processes, etc. Discussion is summed up to end with how to make a geochemical approach available for the long-term disposal safety of nuclear waste or for the performance assessment (PA) as known generally.

• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.186-196
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• 2020

A simple and rapid preconcentration method of actinide from seawater using Actinide resin was developed and tested with the seawater spiked with a known U and Th. The developed method of Actinide resin based on column chromatography is less time-consuming and requires less labor compared with a typical co-precipitation technique for preconcentration of actinides. U and Th, which are relatively weak-bonded with Actinide resin among actinides, were used to determine the optimum flow rate of seawater sample and evaluate the capacity of Actinide resin to concentrate actinides from seawater. A flow rate of 50 mL min^-1 was available with Actinide resin 2 mL (BV, bed volume). When 5 or 10 L of seawater containing U were loaded on Actinide resin (2 mL, BV) at 50 mL min^-1, the recovery of U was 93 % and 86 %, respectively. For extraction of actinides bound with Actinide resin, we compared three methods: solvent extraction, ashing-acid digestion, and ashing-microwave digestion. Ashing-microwave digestion method shows the best performance of which is the recovery of 100 % for U and 81 % for Th. For the preconcentration of actinides in 200 L of seawater, a typical coprecipitation method requires 2-3 days, but the developed method in this study is achieved the high recovery of actinides within 12 h.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2024

In this research, a detailed analysis of the decay heat contributions of both actinides and non-actinides (fission fragments) from spent nuclear fuel (SNF) was made after 50 GWd·tHM^-1 burnup of fresh uranium fuel with 4.5% enrichment lasted for 1,350 days. The calculations were made for a long storage period of 300 years divided into four sections 1, 10, 100, and 300 years so that we could study the decay heat and physical disposal ratios of radioactive waste in medium- and long-term storage periods. Fresh fuel burnup calculations were made using the code MCNP, while isotopic content and then decay heat were calculated using the built-in stiff equation solver in the MATLAB code. It is noted that only around 12 isotopes contribute more than 90% of the decay heat at all times. It is also noted that the contribution of actinides persists and is the dominant ether despite decreasing decay heat, while the effect of fission products decreases at a very rapid rate after about 40 years of storage.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.588-595
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• 2015

This study presents an effective method for additional recovery of residual actinides in liquid electrodes after the electrowinning process of pyroprocessing. The major distinctive feature of this method is a reactor with multiple reaction cells separated by partition walls in order to improve the recovery yield, thereby using the interelement difference in diffusion coefficients within the liquid electrode and controlling the selectivity and purity of element recovery. Through an example of numerical simulation of the diffusion scenarios of individual elements, we verified that the proposed method could effectively separate the actinides (U and Pu) and rare-earth elements contained in liquid cadmium. We performed a five-step consecutive recovery process using a simplified conceptual reaction cell and recovered 58% of the initial amount of actinides (U + Pu) in high purity (${\geq}99%$).

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.08a
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• pp.311.2-311.2
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• 2013

Transmutation characteristics of minor actinides in a transmutation reactor based on a Low Aspect Ratio (LAR) tokamak are investigated. One-dimensional neutron transport and burn-up calculation coupled with the tokamak systems analysis were performed to find the optimal system parameters. The dependence of the transmutation characteristics such as neutron multiplication factor, produced power and transmutation rate on an aspect ratio A in the range of 1.5 to 2.0 was investigated. By adding Pu239 in the transmutation blanket as a neutron multiplication material, it was shown that the one unit of the transmutation reactor based on the LAR tokamak producing fusion power of 150 MWth can destroy the minor actinides contained in the spent fuels produced from more than 19 units of l GWe PWRs with production of the power being in the range of 0.9 - 3.4 GWth.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.663-672
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• 2007

The mutual separation behavior of actinides and rare earths in a countercurrent multistage reductive extraction system was predicted by computer calculation. The distribution information for actinides and rare earths in the reductive extraction systems of LiCl-KCl/Cd and LiCl-KCl/Bi was collected from literature and then it was used for the calculation of a multistage extraction. The results of the concentration profiles throughout the extraction cascade, recovery yields of various metal solutes, and separation factors between the actinides and rare earths were calculated. The effects of the major process parameters, such as reducing agent content in the metal phase, number of stages, and salt/metal flow ratio, etc., on the extraction behavior were also examined.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.41 no.5
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• pp.729-738
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• 2009

Given the evolution of High-Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor(HTGR) designs, the source terms for licensing must be developed. There are three potential source terms: fission products, actinides in the fuel and tritium in the coolant. It is necessary to provide first an inventory of the source terms under normal operations. An analysis of source terms has yet to be performed for HTGRs. The previous code, which can estimate the inventory of the source terms for LWRs, cannot be used for HTGRs because the general data of a typical neutron cross-section and flux has not been developed. Thus, this paper uses a combination of the MCNP, ORIGEN, and MONTETEBURNS codes for an estimation of the source terms. A method in which the HTR-10 core is constructed using the unit lattice of a body-centered cubic is developed for core modeling. Based on this modeling method by MCNP, the generation of fission products, actinides and tritium with an increase in the burnup ratio is simulated. The model developed by MCNP appears feasible through a comparison with models developed in previous studies. Continuous fuel management is divided into five periods for the feeding and discharging of fuel pebbles. This discrete fuel management scheme is employed using the MONTEBURNS code. Finally, the work is investigated for 22 isotope fission products of nuclides, 22 actinides in the core, and tritium in the coolant. The activities are mainly distributed within the range of $10^{15}{\sim}10^{17}$ Bq in the equilibrium core of HTR-10. The results appear to be highly probable, and they would be informative when the spent fuel of HTGRs is taken into account. The tritium inventory in the primary coolant is also taken into account without a helium purification system. This article can lay a foundation for future work on analyses of source terms as a platform for safety assessment in HTGRs.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.79-88
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• 2010

Spent $UO_2$ nuclear fuel discharged from a nuclear power plant (NPP) contains fission products, U, Pu, and other actinides. Due to neutron capture by $^{238}U$ in the rim region and a temperature gradient between the center and the rim of a fuel pellet, a considerable increase in the concentration of fission products, Pu, and other actinides are expected in the pellet periphery of high burnup fuel. The characterization of the radial profiles of the various isotopic concentrations is our main concern. For an analysis, spent nuclear fuels originating from the Yeonggwang-2 pressurized water reactor (PWR) were chosen as the test specimens. In this work, the distributions of some actinide isotopes were measured from center to rim of the spent fuel specimens by a radiation shielded laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (LA-ICP-MS) system. Sampling was performed along the diameter of the specimen by reducing the sampling intervals from 500 ${\mu}m$ in the center to 100 ${\mu}m$ in the pellet periphery region. It was observed that the isotopic concentration ratios for minor actinides in the center of the specimen remain almost constant and increase near the pellet periphery due to the rim effect apart from the $^{236}U$ to $^{235}U$ ratio, which remains approximately constant. In addition, the distributions of local burnup were derived from the measured isotope ratios by applying the relationship between burnup and isotopic ratio for plutonium and minor actinides calculated by the ORIGEN2 code.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.44 no.7
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• pp.767-772
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• 2012

In support of optimizing electrorefining technology for treating spent nuclear fuel, lithium drawdown has been investigated for separating actinides from molten salt electrolyte. Drawdown reaction selectivity is a major issue that requires investigation, since the goal is to remove actinides while leaving the fission products and other components in the salt. A series of lithium drawdown tests with surrogate fission product chlorides was run to obtain selectivity data with non-radioactive salts, develop a predictive model, and draw conclusions about the viability of using this process with actinide-loaded salt. Results of tests with CsCl, $LaCl_3$, $CeCl_3$, and $NdCl_3$ are reported here. Equilibrium was typically achieved in less than 10 hours of contact between lithium metal and molten salt under well-stirred conditions. Maintaining low oxygen and water impurity concentrations (<10 ppm) in the atmosphere was observed to be critical to minimize side reactions and maintain stable salt compositions. An equilibrium model has been formulated and fit to the experimental data. Good fits to the data were achieved. Based on analysis and results obtained to date, it is concluded that clean separation between minor actinides and lanthanides will be difficult to achieve using lithium drawdown.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.373-382
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• 2020

This study proposes a method of separating uranium (U) and minor actinides from rare earth (RE) elements in the LiCl-KCl salt system. Several RE metals were used to reduce UCl₃ and MgCl₂ from the eutectic LiCl-KCl salt systems. Five experiments were performed on drawdown U and plutonium (Pu) surrogate elements from RECl₃-enriched LiCl-KCl salt systems at 773 K. Via the introduction of RE metals into the salt system, it was observed that the UCl₃ concentration can be lowered below 100 ppm. In addition, UCl₃ was reduced into a powdery form that easily settled at the bottom and was successfully collected by a salt distillation operation. When the RE metals come into contact with a metallic structure, a galvanic interaction occurs dominantly, seemingly accelerating the U recovery reaction. These results elucidate the development of an effective and simple process that selectively removes actinides from electrorefining salt, thus contributing to the minimization of the influx of actinides into the nuclear fuel waste stream.