I&EC 298 |
| Alice K. Slemmons1, David A. Costa2, John R. FitzPatrick1, Jeffrey L. Treasure1, Brad S. Schake2, Lisa Townsend1, and Karen G. Duran-Suazo1. (1) Chemistry Division (C-AAC), Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, (2) Nuclear Materials Technology Division (NMT-15), Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545 |
| Throughout the nuclear complex, uranium [U] processing is frequently performed in plutonium-contaminated enclosures. This work often produces trace plutonium [Pu] contamination in the resulting uranium residues. Before uranium may be recovered from the residues, the plutonium concentration must be reduced from approximately 10 g/kg to 100 mg/kg. The feasibility of employing ion exchange separations to clean these residues has been investigated. Initial work employed contact experiments to examine and compare U and Pu uptake kinetics and nitric acid dependencies for a variety of commercially-available ion-exchange materials. Resins studied include Reillex HPQ Polymer (70% and 100%), Dowex Marathon-11, TEVA, U/TEVA, TRU-spec, Actinide Resin, CMPO-PAN, and Duolite C-467. Based on contact-experiment results, promising resins were selected for subsequent development of a bench-scale column method(s) to achieve the low Pu content requirements noted above. In addition to the presentation of contact and column experiments, to-date scale-up progress will be reported.
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Separations for the Nuclear Fuel Cycle in the 21st Century (sponsored by Separation Science & Technology Subdivision)
1:30 PM-4:50 PM, Thursday, April 1, 2004 Marriott -- Orange County 2, Oral
Division of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry |