A Green Approach to SNF Reprocessing: Are Common Household Reagents the Answer?

It has been discovered that UO2, the principal component of spent nuclear fuel (SNF), can efficiently be dissolved at room temperature using a combination of common household reagents, namely hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and ammonia. This rather serendipitous discovery opens up the possibility, for the first time, of considering a non-acidic process for recycling U from SNF. Albeit at the early stages of development, our unconventional dissolution approach possesses many attractive features that could make it a reality in the future. With dissolution byproducts of water and oxygen, our approach poses a minimal threat to the environment. Moreover, the use of common household reagents to afford actinide oxide dissolution suggests a certain degree of economic favorability. With the use of a ''closed'' digestion vessel as a reaction chamber, our approach has substantial versatility with the option of using either aqueous or gaseous reactant feeds or a combination of both. Our approach distinguishes itself from all existing reprocessing technologies in two important ways. First and foremost, it is an alkaline rather than an acidic process, using mild non-corrosive chemicals under ambient conditions to effect actinide separations. Secondly, it does not dissolve the entire SNF matrix, but rather selectively solubilizes U and other light actinides for subsequent separation, resulting in potentially faster head-end dissolution and fewer downstream separation steps. From a safeguards perspective, the use of oxidizing alkaline solutions to effect actinide separations also potentially offers a degree of inherent proliferation resistance, by allowing the U to be selectively removed from the remaining dissolver solution while keeping Pu grouped with the other minor actinides and fission products. This paper will describe the design and general experimental setup of a 'closed' digestion vessel for performing uranium oxide dissolutions under alkaline conditions using gaseous reactant feeds, and preliminary data on the parameters affecting the alkaline dissolution of UO2 in aqueous peroxide-containing carbonate systems