Development of the Co-processing process with the centrifugal contactor

Sakamoto, Atsushi  ; Sato, Takehiko ; Sano, Yuichi   ; Takeuchi, Masayuki 

The PUREX process has been widely used in industrial reprocessing plants for spent nuclear fuel. It can separate uranium and plutonium individually from dissolved solution of spent nuclear fuel by solvent extraction technique. So, a risk of nuclear proliferation has to be considered as one of the subjects, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) has been developing a new extraction process, named as Co-processing process to decrease it. It can control to accompany plutonium with uranium in over-all solvent extraction stage using TBP (Tri-Butyl-Phosphate) as an extractant as well as the PUREX process. In this study, prior to the extraction test using genuine solution, uranium extraction behaviour on the Co-processing flowsheet and its robustness on flowrate increment were discussed using a centrifugal contactors system. Also, the decontamination effect on various flowsheet design was evaluated using rhenium (substitute for technetium) and zirconium.