lnvestigation of recovery system for Am and Cm; Results in 1999

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ln JAPAN NUCLEAR CYCLE DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE, the feasiblity study has been carried out in order to evaluate various methods of FBR cycle technology and to propose candidate concepts of practical technology. As a part of this, we investigated material balance and a process flow diagram of SETFICS process for the recovery system of Am and Cm from high level radioactive liquid waste, and we preliminarily evaluated the equipment scale, the cost and waste generation rate of this system. As a result, it was obtained that these values are about 17, 15 and 10%, respectively, of the recycle plant based on the simplified PUREX process. ln addition, we investigated preliminary flowsheets of 4 recovery systems for Am and Cm, and compared each to each of them. lt was evaluated that the equipment scale of any process was also equivalent. From these results, each system is applicable as the recovery system of Am and Cm. But these results suggest that the facility may be much larger than the PUREX plant, in spite of small contents of the recovery materials in each system. Therefore, whichever method is applied to the recovery system of Am and Cm, we need to develop the process in order to make the system more compact and economical.