Pyroprocessing is a high-temperature electrochemical fuel processing technology for recycling the spent fuel into metal fuel for a nuclear fast reactor. The electrochemical processing for oxide fuel consists of electrochemical reduction, electrorefining, and electrowinning. In the electrochemical reduction process, most of actinide oxides and noble metal oxides can be reduced while the electrochemical reduction of rare-earth oxides is fairly difficult due to those high oxygen affinity and thermodynamic stability. It is known that the unreduced oxides might react with UCl<sub>3</sub> to form fine uranium oxide in the electrorefining step, which cause many problems in the electorefining step. In this study, co-reduction of rare earth oxides (Nd2O3, La2O3, CeO2) and NiO has been investigated to increase the reduction degree of the rare earth oxides in the electrochemical reduction. The results demonstrate that the increased reducibility of the rare earth oxide could be achieved in the molten LiCl-Li2O medium.

Increased reducibility of rare earth oxides in pyro-electrochemical fuel processing

251st National Meeting (2016)

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