Electro-deposition behavior of minor actinides with liquid cadmium cathodes
Kofuji, Hirohide
; Fukushima, Mineo; Kitawaki, Shinichi
; Myochin, Munetaka; Kormilitsyn, M. V.*; Terai, Takayuki*
Transuranic elements would be electro-deposited simultaneously with liquid cadmium cathode (LCC) and be decontaminated from fission products (FP) dissolved in molten 3LiCl-2KCl in the electrorefining step of the metal electrorefining process. Some lab-scale experiments of electrolysis were carried out with uranium (U), plutonium (Pu) and minor actinides elements (MA) in order to evaluate the performance of LCC. As the results of experiments, it was confirmed that neptunium (Np), americium (Am) and curium (Cm) could be recovered with Pu into LCC by the electrolysis operation. The separation factors of MA vs. Pu were estimated to be about 0.7 to 2.5.