23.04.2013 Views

Management of Commercially Generated Radioactive Waste - U.S. ...

Management of Commercially Generated Radioactive Waste - U.S. ...

Management of Commercially Generated Radioactive Waste - U.S. ...

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.

Predisposal Treatment<br />

6.122<br />

In a fuel cycle involving transmutation, it would be necessary to partition the materials<br />

to be recycled and transmuted. The partitioning flowsheet would have two fundamental steps.<br />

The first would be to separate the actinides from other materials and the second would be to<br />

recover the actinides in a relatively pure form. Actinides would be separated by various<br />

methods and would originate from many sources, including high-level waste, dissolver solids,<br />

cladding, filters, incinerator ashes, salt wastes, and solvent cleanup wastes. The extrac-<br />

table actinides from these operations would be sent to actinide recovery, where they would be<br />

partitioned and purified.<br />

Facilities Description<br />

There are four facilities in the reference fuel cycle that process the actinides: the<br />

fuel reprocessing plant (FRP), the fuel fabrication plant (FFP), and a colocated waste treat-<br />

ment facility (WTF) for each. The purpose <strong>of</strong> the two WTF's would be to recover a high per-<br />

centage <strong>of</strong> the actinides that would ordinarily be delegated to process wastes.<br />

The FRP-WTF and FFP-WTF would have the following common process capabilities:<br />

(1) Actinide recovery<br />

(2) Cation exchange chromatography (CEC)<br />

(3) Acid and water recycle<br />

(4) Salt waste treatment<br />

(5) Solid alpha waste treatment.<br />

In addition, the FRP-WTF would have high-level liquid waste and dissolver solid waste treat-<br />

ment process capabilities. The WTF facilities would be constructed on sites about 460 m<br />

(1,500 ft) from the FRP and FFP, but still within a fuel cycle center that would allow common<br />

services and utilities for the entire center. Additional detailed design and cost informa-<br />

tion is available in Smith and Davis (1980).<br />

Since transmutation would take place in the reactor itself, no special facilities would<br />

be required, although the irradiation levels <strong>of</strong> the recycle fuel require that the fuel assem-<br />

blies be handled remotely. Because transmutation.would eliminate only a specific segment <strong>of</strong><br />

the waste, all the facilities required for conventional terrestrial disposal, e.g., a mine<br />

geologic repository as described in Chapter 5, would also be necessary in this fuel cycle.<br />

The use <strong>of</strong> transmutation would not significantly change the total amount <strong>of</strong> waste or the<br />

necessary throughput <strong>of</strong> waste disposal facilities.<br />

Retrievability/Recovery<br />

The segment <strong>of</strong> waste disposed <strong>of</strong> in the mined geologic repository would exhibit the same<br />

characteristics discussed in Chapter 5 <strong>of</strong> this report.

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!