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Closing the Nuclear Fuel Cycle with a Simplified Minor Actinide Lanthanide Separation Process (ALSEP) and Additive Manufacturing
Expanded low-carbon baseload power production through the use of nuclear fission can be enabled by recycling long-lived actinide isotopes within the nuclear fuel cycle. This approach provides the benefits of (a) more completely utilizing the energy potential of mined uranium, (b) reducing the footpr...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6731290/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31492918 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-48619-x |
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author | Gelis, Artem V. Kozak, Peter Breshears, Andrew T. Brown, M. Alex Launiere, Cari Campbell, Emily L. Hall, Gabriel B. Levitskaia, Tatiana G. Holfeltz, Vanessa E. Lumetta, Gregg J. |
author_facet | Gelis, Artem V. Kozak, Peter Breshears, Andrew T. Brown, M. Alex Launiere, Cari Campbell, Emily L. Hall, Gabriel B. Levitskaia, Tatiana G. Holfeltz, Vanessa E. Lumetta, Gregg J. |
author_sort | Gelis, Artem V. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Expanded low-carbon baseload power production through the use of nuclear fission can be enabled by recycling long-lived actinide isotopes within the nuclear fuel cycle. This approach provides the benefits of (a) more completely utilizing the energy potential of mined uranium, (b) reducing the footprint of nuclear geological repositories, and (c) reducing the time required for the radiotoxicity of the disposed waste to decrease to the level of uranium ore from one hundred thousand years to a few hundred years. A key step in achieving this goal is the separation of long-lived isotopes of americium (Am) and curium (Cm) for recycle into fast reactors. To achieve this goal, a novel process was successfully demonstrated on a laboratory scale using a bank of 1.25-cm centrifugal contactors, fabricated by additive manufacturing, and a simulant containing the major fission product elements. Americium and Cm were separated from the lanthanides with over 99.9% completion. The sum of the impurities of the Am/Cm product stream using the simulated raffinate was found to be 3.2 × 10(−3) g/L. The process performance was validated using a genuine high burnup used nuclear fuel raffinate in a batch regime. Separation factors of nearly 100 for (154)Eu over (241)Am were achieved. All these results indicate the process scalability to an engineering scale. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6731290 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-67312902019-09-18 Closing the Nuclear Fuel Cycle with a Simplified Minor Actinide Lanthanide Separation Process (ALSEP) and Additive Manufacturing Gelis, Artem V. Kozak, Peter Breshears, Andrew T. Brown, M. Alex Launiere, Cari Campbell, Emily L. Hall, Gabriel B. Levitskaia, Tatiana G. Holfeltz, Vanessa E. Lumetta, Gregg J. Sci Rep Article Expanded low-carbon baseload power production through the use of nuclear fission can be enabled by recycling long-lived actinide isotopes within the nuclear fuel cycle. This approach provides the benefits of (a) more completely utilizing the energy potential of mined uranium, (b) reducing the footprint of nuclear geological repositories, and (c) reducing the time required for the radiotoxicity of the disposed waste to decrease to the level of uranium ore from one hundred thousand years to a few hundred years. A key step in achieving this goal is the separation of long-lived isotopes of americium (Am) and curium (Cm) for recycle into fast reactors. To achieve this goal, a novel process was successfully demonstrated on a laboratory scale using a bank of 1.25-cm centrifugal contactors, fabricated by additive manufacturing, and a simulant containing the major fission product elements. Americium and Cm were separated from the lanthanides with over 99.9% completion. The sum of the impurities of the Am/Cm product stream using the simulated raffinate was found to be 3.2 × 10(−3) g/L. The process performance was validated using a genuine high burnup used nuclear fuel raffinate in a batch regime. Separation factors of nearly 100 for (154)Eu over (241)Am were achieved. All these results indicate the process scalability to an engineering scale. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-09-06 /pmc/articles/PMC6731290/ /pubmed/31492918 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-48619-x Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Gelis, Artem V. Kozak, Peter Breshears, Andrew T. Brown, M. Alex Launiere, Cari Campbell, Emily L. Hall, Gabriel B. Levitskaia, Tatiana G. Holfeltz, Vanessa E. Lumetta, Gregg J. Closing the Nuclear Fuel Cycle with a Simplified Minor Actinide Lanthanide Separation Process (ALSEP) and Additive Manufacturing |
title | Closing the Nuclear Fuel Cycle with a Simplified Minor Actinide Lanthanide Separation Process (ALSEP) and Additive Manufacturing |
title_full | Closing the Nuclear Fuel Cycle with a Simplified Minor Actinide Lanthanide Separation Process (ALSEP) and Additive Manufacturing |
title_fullStr | Closing the Nuclear Fuel Cycle with a Simplified Minor Actinide Lanthanide Separation Process (ALSEP) and Additive Manufacturing |
title_full_unstemmed | Closing the Nuclear Fuel Cycle with a Simplified Minor Actinide Lanthanide Separation Process (ALSEP) and Additive Manufacturing |
title_short | Closing the Nuclear Fuel Cycle with a Simplified Minor Actinide Lanthanide Separation Process (ALSEP) and Additive Manufacturing |
title_sort | closing the nuclear fuel cycle with a simplified minor actinide lanthanide separation process (alsep) and additive manufacturing |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6731290/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31492918 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-48619-x |
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