Chlorination of UO2, PuO2 and rare earth oxides using ZrCl4 in LiCl–KCl eutectic melt

Low Temperature Chlorination of Nd<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> by Mechanochemical Method with CCl<sub>4</sub>

“…Therefore, the study on the dissolution of actinide oxides into the melt has been conducted as the chlorination process development. In the current study [2], the uranium oxides in the LiCl-KCl eutectic melt were chlorinated to uranium chlorides by the addition of zirconium tetra-chloride, ZrCl 4 , but zirconia particles were generated by this chlorination. When this adding ZrCl 4 method is assumed to apply to the practical process, it is necessary to establish the efficient technique which can separate the zirconia particles from the melt at high temperature.…”

Evaluation of Power Fluidic Pumping Technology for Molten Salt Reactor Applications

“…Terrestrial Energy Inc. has also discussed using pyrochemical processes to prepare fuel salt from used CANDU fuel [33,34]. Elysium Industries has also referenced salt-based LWR fuel processing methods to prepare new fuel for their reactor design [35,36] [39].…”

Pyrochemical fuel cycle technologies for processing of spent nuclear fuels

“…MOX fuels were reduced to metal form by the electroreduction, and the reduction products were charged in the electrorefiner to recover uranium and Pu-U as cathode deposits. However, it was also demonstrated that the material balance of uranium can be recovered by the addition of ZrCl 4 (Sakamura et al, 2005a), which reacts with the precipitated UO 2 by rechlorinating it back into the electrolyte. As shown in Figure 18.15, the obtained mass balance for plutonium and americium is satisfactory to demonstrate the feasibility of the process in sequential mode.…”

“…The results of large-scale high-temperature distillation tests using a solid cathode product for the treatment of spent metallic fuels from EBR-II were reported by INL (Westphal et al, 2008 In these tests, a zirconia-based castable crucible (78 wt% zirconia, 20 wt% aluminum, and 2 wt% carbon) was used normally at 1473 K as a lining material for the graphite secondary container. Although it was evaluated that about 2.72% of uranium contained in the initially loaded cathode product reacted with this coating material, the resultant UO 2 remaining in the coated layer has no influence on final material mass balance of the pyrometallurgical process because it can be converted to its chloride by reaction with zirconium and ZrCl 4 (Sakamura et al, 2005a). However, higher operating temperatures would be required for the cathode processor to adapt to the actual electrorefining situation; this is because the solid cathode product obtained near the end of each anode batch tends to contain more zirconium, which increases the melting point of U-Zr alloy, compared with that recovered at the beginning .…”