Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology

The removal of radioactive corrosion products from the reactor coolant through a magnetic filter system is one of the many approaches being investigated as a means to reduce radiation sources and exposures to the operational and maintenance personnel in a nuclear power plant. Many research activities in water chemistry, therefore, have been performed to provide a filtration system with high reliability and feasibility and are still in process. In this study, it was devised the magnetic filter system with permanent and electric magnets to remove the corrosion products in the coolant stream taking an advantage of the magnetic properties of corrosion particles. Permanent magnets were used for separation of corrosion products and electric magnets were utilized for flocculation of colloidal particles to increase in their size. Experiments using only permanent magnets, in the previous study, displayed the satisfactory outcome of filtering corrosion products and indicated that the removal efficiency was more than 90 % for above 5 ㎛ particles. Experiments using electric magnets also showed the good performance of flocculation without chemical agents and exhibited that most corrosion particles were flocculated into lager aggregates about 5 ㎛ and over in diameter. It is, thus, expected that the magnetic filter system with the arrangement of permanent and electric magnets will be an effective way for the removal of radioactive corrosion products with considerably high removal efficiency.

Keywords

radioactive corrosion products,magnetic filter system,permanent magnets,electric magnets,particle size