Conveners
NFC 5
- Guoan Ye
- Konstantinos Kavallieratos (Florida International University)
The hot compressed water (HCW) is a remarkable reaction medium. In the nuclear field, the HCW method has been successfully applied in chemical synthesis and separations, nuclear waste treatment, studies of accelerated corrosion of cladding materials, etc. Moreover, the supercritical water (SCW) reactor is a concept of GenIV reactors under consideration.
We have employed the HCW (here...
Magnox PuO2 packaged before 1975 has become contaminated with Cl-, from thermally degraded PVC bags it was stored in, and water, from exposure to the atmosphere. Heat treatment is the preferred method for decontaminating the PuO2 for storage before either subsequent reuse as Mixed Oxide (MOX) fuel or safe disposal in a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF). Ion chromatography experiments carried...
In any advanced nuclear fuel cycle, partitioning and transmutation (P&T) is a key strategy to reduce spent nuclear fuel’s radiotoxicity and heat generation: Long-lived minor actinides (MA) are partitioned from spent nuclear fuel and subsequently converted to fuel pins or targets. These are used as nuclear fuel in fast reactor systems where the actinides are fissioned to short-lived...
The CeSNEF L-54M was a homogeneous nuclear research reactor fueled by a uranyl sulfate aqueous solution enriched by 19.94% 235U. It was commissioned by Politecnico di Milano to Atomics International in the late '50s. After 20 years of operation, in 1979 the reactor was definitely shut down. Since then, Politecnico di Milano decided to manage the entire structure according to in-situ safe...
Although thorium dioxide is considered as a replacement for UO$_2$ as a matrix for nuclear fuel, there are practical problems which must be resolved before deployment. These include the poor sinterability and the cost of manufacture. ThO$_2$ is the most stable binary oxide and thus requires higher temperatures than UO$_2$ to sinter to the required densities of ≥95%. The sintering temperatures...
