Resin selection and loading to reduce wet radwaste generation - 15153

In the United States, high activity spent resin disposal has been constrained or very costly. This situation has driven operating nuclear power plants to consider up front wet waste pollution prevention or minimization in addition to back end volume reduction. Several plants have altered the resin load placed into system process vessels to reduce spent resin volume. The use of different types of resin can extend bed life to reduce radwaste generation. The use of macro porous resins can remove particulate and reduce the quantity of radioactive mechanical cartridge filters. Loading cation resins into separate vessels from anion resin has extended resin life reducing radwaste generation. In addition, several plants have also found that loading less anion resin in 'mixed' beds provides the same bed life with only 50% of the resin volume. These practices and the overall reduction of resin generation volume will be discussed in the paper. These successful practices indicate that new power plants should provide resin vessels of smaller overall size that are taller and thinner. (authors)