Salt-free separation of 241Am(III) from lanthanides by highly stable macroporous silica-polymer based Me2-CA-BTP/SiO2-P adsorbent

Separation of Minor Actinides from High-Level Liquid Waste Using Novel Silica-Based Butyl-BTP Adsorbents

“…), which are alpha emitters with long half-lives (e.g., 241 Am t1/2 = 432.2y, 243 Am t1/2 = 7.38 × 103 y), contribute most of the long-term radiotoxicity of high-level liquid waste [1,2]. The efficient separation of MAs is of great significance for the final geological disposal of the HLLW and is also an essential component of the partition and transmutation (P&T) strategy to transmute the long-lived nuclides into short-lived or stable nuclides [3][4][5]. The fission products lanthanides (Lns) are much more abundant than MAs in HLLW and are neutron poisons, so they need to be separated before MA transmutation.…”

“…The fission products lanthanides (Lns) are much more abundant than MAs in HLLW and are neutron poisons, so they need to be separated before MA transmutation. Since Ln(III) possesses very similar chemical properties to MA(III) in solution, the selective separation of MA(III) from Ln(III) has become one of the most challenging technical problems in HLLW partitioning [3][4][5][6][7]. From the viewpoints of minimizing the long-term radiotoxic risk to the environment and facilitating the P&T strategy, the separation of the long-lived minor actinides (Am, Cm) from HLLW is an important task.…”

“…In the first column, the elements contained in the HLLW can be partitioned into (a) non-adsorptive fission products (FP), (b) MA-Ln, and (c) Zr-Mo, according to their different adsorption and elution properties with CMPO and the eluents. The MA-Ln effluent is then supplied to the second column packed with the R-BTP adsorbent, where the MA is expected to be selectively isolated from the Ln fission products, since the trivalent actinides have much stronger adsorbability onto R-BTP than the trivalent lanthanides [4][5][6][7]. For this process, we synthesized some new silica-based adsorbents by impregnating CMPO or R-BTP into a styrene-divinylbenzene copolymer, which was immobilized in porous silica particles with a mean diameter of 60 µm (SiO 2 -P).…”