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Comparison of the performance of solvent wash reagents used for the primary cleanup of degraded PUREX solvent

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Published/Copyright: November 23, 2022

Abstract

The effectiveness of the solvent wash reagents such as sodium carbonate and hydrazine carbonate were compared using the lean solvent obtained during reprocessing of high plutonium content fast reactor spent nuclear fuel. The concentrations of the reagents were optimized based on the removal of retained metal ions from the lean solvent and 1.5 M hydrazine carbonate was found to be optimal and superior to sodium carbonate to be adopted as the reagent for primary cleanup of the spent solvent. Both the reagents were found to possess excellent room temperature stability and their performance was not affected upon gamma irradiation which was assessed in terms of capacity to remove di-butyl phosphate from degraded TBP/n-DD system.


Corresponding author: Konda Athmaram Venkatesan, Reprocessing Group, IGCAR, Kalpakkam, India; and Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai 400 094, India, E-mail:

  1. Author contributions: All the authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this submitted manuscript and approved submission.

  2. Research funding: None declared.

  3. Conflict of interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding this article.

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Received: 2022-08-02
Accepted: 2022-10-18
Published Online: 2022-11-23
Published in Print: 2023-01-27

© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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