Development of technology for volume reduction of depleted uranium waste

The purpose of this project is to provide a practical technology to treat spent uranium catalyst generated by a private company in Korea, while verifying a patent developed by KAERI to treat the uranium waste in pilot-scale process and developing stabilized and immobilized matrix for disposal of uranium waste from the process of volume reduction of spent uranium catalyst. All the experiment in the laboratory, bench, pilot scales showed to exceed the goals of the process such as more than 60% of dissolution yield of spent uranium catalyst by dissolution, less than 1 Bq/g of SiO2,and less than 1 ppm of wastewater to be released to environment so that this project verified that process for the volume reduction of uranium catalyst suggested by KAERI was sound and it can be used for commercial operation. The uranium waste from the process could be a very stable and rigid glass-ceramic materials by using a sintering method with additional volume reduction of approximately 50 % of its green body. The additional volume reduction during the sintering made the total volume reduction over 80 % with respect to the original waste. An effective drumming method of the finally uranium waste was suggested to be with minimal voids in drum. The expected area and cost for building the commercial process for treatment of the spent uranium catalyst was evaluated through basic drawing of the facility. The company, the uranium waste generator will treat its uranium catalyst waste through a commercial-scale process built based on this project results