Studies of the processing of PuO2 have been performed over many years due to its role in nuclear fuel and waste storage. Further studies have been performed to develop models for the synthesis of lab-scale PuO2. The PreCalc project combines known and new models for use in modeling plant-scale precipitation. The precipitation module simulates plutonium oxalate nucleation and growth using known processing parameters including molecular weight, concentration, and time. These parameters are correlated to the primary homogeneous nucleation rate and size independent growth rate to predict the Pu-oxalate particle size distribution after precipitation. This multi-stage software framework also utilizes a data-driven calcination model to predict the PuO2 product characteristics after calcination. A number of processing conditions were identified to control the specific surface area and mean particle size of the final product. Using SRNL calcination results a data-driven model was developed to correlate process data to the specific surface area (SSA) and mean particle size (PS). By combining the two model frameworks the PreCalc software provides prediction of the full PuO2 product characteristics after both precipitation and calcination processes. The results presented here are meant to provide insight into the current efforts in software development and illustrate future capabilities.

Dynamic simulation of plutonium processing

ACS Fall 2021

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