Study on dissolution of UO to obtain the high U solution

not registered   ; not registered; Sakurai, Koji*; not registered  ; Nomura, Kazunori  ; not registered 

Concerning the preparation of high U solution for the crystallization process and the application of UO powder dissolution to that, the effects of final U concentration, dissolution temperature, nitric acid concentration and powder size on the dissolution of UO powder in the nitric acid where the final U concentration was 800g/L were investigated. The experimental results showed that the solubility of UO decreased with the increase of final UO concentration and powder size, and with the decrease of dissolution temperature and nitric acid concentration. It was also confirmed that in the condition where the final U concentration was sufficiently lower than the solubility of U, UO dissolution behavior in the high U solution could be estimated with the equation based on the fragmentation model which we had already reported. Based on these experimental results, the dissolution behavior of irradiated MOX fuel in high U solution was estimated and the possibility of supplying high U solution to the crystallization process was discussed. In the preparation of high U solution for the crystallization process, it was estimated that the present dissolution process (dissolution for fuel pieces of about 3cm long) needed a lot of time to obtain a high dissolution yield, but it was shorted drastically by the pulverization of fuel pieces. The burst of off-gas at the early in the dissolution of fuel powder seems to be avoidable with setting the appropriate dissolution condition, and it is important to optimize the dissolution condition with considering the capacity of off-gas treatment process.