The largest challenge of nuclear power production is how to safely dispose of used nuclear fuel. Processing the fuel to remove neutron poisons allows utilization of the remaining uranium and transuranic elements, including plutonium, as a mixed oxide fuel (MOX). This in turn reduces the heat load of deep geological repositories, reduces the environmental impact of uranium mining by requiring less mining, and reduces the time that the remaining used nuclear fuel is radiotoxic. The historical implementation of used fuel reprocessing in the United States has focused on the complete separation of plutonium from uranium. However, due to political changes and safety concerns, isolation of pure plutonium is no longer desirable. Bleeding a controlled amount of uranium into the plutonium product during solvent extraction will allow the direct production of MOX for commercial power production, which reduces secondary waste from blending operations, increases criticality safety, and increases safeguards security. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is optimizing the Co-DeContamination (CoDCon) flowsheet with sixteen 2-cm centrifugal contactors, and answering several operational questions. Can the ratio of Pu:U be monitored in real-time? Can real-time adjustments be made to maintain a target ratio? What is a reasonable tolerance for the target Pu:U ratio? This presentation will present the results of the first three CoDCon tests in which we have demonstrated that online monitoring is an extremely useful tool tracking the real-time concentrations and oxidation states of the actinide elements, and real-time adjustments can be made to maintain a Pu:U ratio within 2 percent.

Real-time adjustment of Pu:U ratios in the CoDCon (modified PUREX) flowsheet

2019 Spring National Meeting

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