Recovery of enriched uranium from waste solution obtained from fuel manufacture laboratories

Reversed-phase partition chromatography is shown to be a convenient and applicable method for the quantitative recovery of microgram to gram quantities of Uranium (19.7% enriched with 235U) from highly impure solution. The processing of Uranium compounds for atomic energy project especially in FMPP (fuel manufacture pilot plant) gives rise to a variety of wastes in which the Uranium content is of considerable importance. The recovery of Uranium from concentrated mother liquors produced from ADU (ammonium diuranate) precipitation, as well as those due to ADU washing is studied in this work. Column of Poly-trifluoro-monochloro-ethylene (Kel-F) supporting tri-n-butyl-phosphate (TBP) retains Uranium. Impurities are eluted with 6.5 M HCl, and the Uranium is eluted with water and the recovery of Uranium is better than 94%. (author)