Development of the pyrochemical process of spent nitride fuels for ADS; Its elemental technologies and process flow diagram

Hayashi, Hirokazu ; Sato, Takumi  ; Shibata, Hiroki ; Iwai, Takashi; Nishihara, Kenji  ; Arai, Yasuo

R&D on the transmutation of long-lived minor actinides (MA) by the accelerator-driven system (ADS) using nitride fuels is underway at Japan Atomic Energy Agency. In regard to reprocessing technology, pyrochemical process has several advantages in case of treating spent fuel with large decay heat and fast neutron emission, and recovering highly enriched N-15. In the pyrochemical reprocessing, plutonium (Pu) and MA are dissolved in LiCl-KCl eutectic melts and selectively recovered into liquid cadmium (Cd) cathode by molten salt electrorefining. The recovered Pu and MA are converted to nitrides by the nitridation-distillation combined method, in which the Cd alloys containing Pu and MA are heated in nitrogen gas stream. The authors have investigated its elemental technologies such as electrorefining and renitridation. On the other hand, development of the process flow diagram with the material balance sheet of the pyrochemical reprocessing of spent nitride fuel for ADS is in progress. This paper summarized recent progress of the study which aims to prove the technological applicability of pyrochemical process to the nitride fuel cycle for transmutation of MA.