Nuclear material inventory estimation in solvent extraction contactors

This report describes the development of simple nuclear material (uranium and plutonium) inventory relations for mixer-settler solvent extraction contactors used in reprocessing spent nuclear fuels. The relations are developed for light water reactor fuels where the organic phase is 30% tri-n-butylphosphate (TBP) by volume. For reprocessing plants using mixer-settler contactors as much as 50% of the nuclear material within the contactors is contained in A type (aqueous to organic extraction) contactors. Another very significant portion of the contactor inventory is in the partitioning contactors. The stripping contactors contain a substantial uranium inventory but contain a very small plutonium inventory (about 5 to 10% of the total contactor inventory). The simplified inventory relations developed in this work for mixer-settler contactors reproduce the PUBG databases within about a 5% standard deviation. They can be formulated to explicitly show the dependence of the inventory on nuclear material concentrations in the aqueous feed streams. The dependence of the inventory on contactor volumes, phase volume ratios, and acid and TBP concentrations are implicitly contained in parameters that can be calculated for a particular reprocessing plant from nominal flow sheet data. The terms in the inventory relations that represent the larger portion of the inventory in A type and partitioning contactors can be extended to pulsed columns virtually without change