Recovery and Reuse of Uranium from Radioactive Carbon Dioxide (The joint research report about precedence basic engineering research)

Aihara, Masahiko*; Yanai, Shinjiro*; Shimazaki, Yohei*; Nomura, Mitsuo; Yamazaki, Hitoshi; Hayashibara, Kenichi

To run the nuclear fuel cycle safely, new treatment and disposal technologies of radioactive waste from the cycle must be developed. Super critical CO2 extraction attracts attention as a technology to recover the uranium in low level solid waste. In this paper it is proposed that use of carbonation of calcium oxide and decarbonation of calcium carbonate for the system which recovers and reuses high pressure carbon dioxide discharge form the super-critical process. Conducting the cycle reaction experiment at the high pressure of carbon dioxide with the calcium oxide absorbent, the reaction velocity analysis, the structural analysis of solid reactant, the numerical analysis of the reaction characteristic and the recover-reuse process were discussed. The rate of carbonation at about 2MPa was most rapid with the stable reaction conversion of about 0.4 through 5 cycles. In the range of these experiment conditions The solid reactant was observed consisting of about 1-10 mm particles of the aggregate of minute grains. It was found that a blockade of the void between the grains after carbonation at high pressure CO2 caused the reduction of conversion and rate of carbonation. The heat consumption of CO2 recovery for the recover-reuse system was estimated by use of the reaction analysis data.