In order to meet future energy needs without increasing greenhouse gas emissions, nuclear energy remains one of the best available options. However, there are concerns about the long-term disposal of the reactor spent nuclear fuel, as demonstrated in the Fukushima-Daiichi tsunami incident. An alternative practice is to recycle and reprocess spent nuclear fuel. To date, the use of solvent-extraction systems with designer ligands have proven very effective in quantitatively separating out uranium and plutonium from fuel dissolved in nitric acid.  However, the removal of the minor actinides, americium and curium, from the more prevalent lanthanides present, is more problematic. In addition, all of these chemicals must be first shown to endure high radiation exposure in order to for the separation to be ultimately successful.            One potentially useful separations approach for the minor actinides is to use an appropriate hydrophilic ligand for the selective complexation of actinides, and extract out the undesired lanthanides into an organic phase. Specific ligands such as water-soluble BTPs or BTBPs have been synthesized for this approach.  However, the radiation stability of these compounds has not yet been determined.            Previous work on other extraction ligand systems has shown that their radiation-induced degradation is mostly by indirect means, from the radical species produced in diluent radiolysis.  In aqueous solution, the nitrate and hydroxyl radicals have been identified as the most important for ligand degradation at process scale.  Therefore in this study we have determined the kinetics and efficacy of these radical reactions, utilizing electron pulse radiolysis and steady-state irradiation techniques.

Investigating the radiation stability of lanthanide-actinide separations ligands used in nuclear waste recycling: Water soluble BTPs and BTBPs

248th National Meeting (2014)

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