Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology

The composition of the reduced fuel produced in the electrolytic reduction process of pyroprocessing affects the concentration change of UCl₃, an important operating variable of the electrorefining process. In this study, we examined the concentration change of UCl₃ in the electrorefiner according to the content of TRU and RE elements in the reduced fuel and the concentration of Li₂O introduced in the electrorefiner accompanied with the reduced fuel. Considering only the TRU and RE elements, the concentration of UCl₃ decreased with increasing the number of electrorefining operation batch. In order to operate one campaign (20 batches) of electrorefining process, it was found that additional injection of UCl₃ should be conducted more than 3 times. On the other hand, the concentration of UCl3 in the electrorefiner changed significantly depending on the concentration of Li₂O and, accordingly the number of operable electrorefining batches decreased rapidly, showing that the concentration of Li₂O is an important operating variable in electrorefining. Therefore, the results of this study show that to maintain the concentration of UCl₃ in the electrorefiner, the operation mode should be set by taking into account the effect of Li₂O as well as the TRU and RE elements contained in the reduced fuel.

Keywords

Electrolytic reduction,Reduced fuel,Concentration of Li₂O,Electrorefining,Concentration of Ucl₃