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Progress in Chemistry 2011, Vol. 23 Issue (7): 1308-1315 Previous Articles   Next Articles

• Special issues •

Application of Supercritical Fluid Extraction in Reprocessing of Spent Nuclear Fuel

Zhu Liyang, Wen Mingfen, Duan Wuhua, Xu Jingming*, Zhu Yongjun   

  1. Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 102201, China
  • Received: Revised: Online: Published:
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PUREX process is used in the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) for many years. But the operation of the process produces large volume of secondary waste and encounters difficulties in dealing with new type of spent nuclear fuel in the future, such as UO2 spent fuel with higher burn up and MOX (mixed oxide) spent fuel. Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) as a novel non-aqueous technology has potential to use in nuclear industry. The current researches on application of SFE in nuclear industry include decontamination of solid radioactive waste, volume reduction of liquid radioactive waste and reprocessing of SNF. To use SFE in the reprocessing of SNF can simplify the process and reduce the secondary waste greatly. The reprocessing conceptual flow sheets based on supercritical fluid extraction are developed in Japan and Russia, which show promising prospect to be applied in the future. It is being investigated to use supercritical fluid extraction for the reprocessing of high temperature gas cooled reactor (HTGR) SNF in INET (Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology, Tsinghua University). The pebble fuel of HTGR is disintegrated by electrochemical intercalation method, and then the UO2 kernels are converted into nitrate by N2O4 and extracted by supercritical CO2 fluid containing TBP (tri-butyl phosphate). The recovery rate of uranium is 99.93%. The experimental results indicated the possibility of using electrochemical intercalation technology and SFE technology in reprocessing of HTGR spent nuclear fuel.

Contents
1 Introduction
2 Development trend of SNF reprocessing
2.1 Improvement of PUREX process
2.2 Development of pyrochemical process
3 Application of SFE in reprocessing
3.1 Principal of supercritical fluid extraction
3.2 Extraction of metal ions from solid matrix
3.3 Extraction of metal ions from aqueous solution
3.4 Direct extraction of actinide and lanthanide oxides
3.5 N2O4 nitration combined with SFE
3.6 Concept flow sheets of SNF reprocessing on SFE
4 R&D on reprocessing of HTGR SNF by SFE
4.1 Disintegration of pebble fuel of HTGR by electrochemical intercalation method
4.2 Supercritical fluid extraction of fuel kernel
5 Conclusion

Key words: supercritical fluid extraction(SFE), reprocessing, secondary wastes, HTGR, electrochemical intercalation, spent nuclear fuel (SNF)

CLC Number: 


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