A METHOD FOR REGENERATION OF SPENT ELECTROCHEMICAL DECONTAMINATION SOLUTION AND ITS TREATMENT FOR FINAL DISPOSAL

This paper describes the method of regeneration of spent electrochemical decontamination solution. The proposed method allows separation of radionuclides and stable metals from spent decontamination solution in a form suitable for final disposal and repeated use of the remaining solution for electrochemical decontamination. Development of this method was based on the results of the speciation studies which showed that Fe(III) can be precipitated in the presence of organic complexing agents, in a form of iron hydroxide, and Ag-110m, Co-60, Mn-54 radionuclides can be coprecipitated on it. In order to verify the conclusions made as a result of the speciation studies, the experiments with electrochemically prepared simulant solution and real solution were carried out. The test results proved that the proposed method can be applied in practice. Treatment of the ultimately spent decontamination solutions can be also made applying iron precipitation, which allows for removal of the bulk amount of contaminants, as the first step. Then, if necessary the remaining radionuclides can be removed by sorption. A series of novel absorbers has been tested for their potential for the sorption removal of the remaining radionuclides from the supernate. The test results showed that most of them were more effective in neutral or alkaline range of pH, however, the high efficiency of the sorption removal can be achieved only after the removal of the oxalic and citric acids from solution