Development of high performance clarification system for spent MOX fuel reprocessing

Takeuchi, Masayuki ; Takata, Takeshi ; Saito, Keita*; Chikazawa, Takahiro*

Control of insoluble sludge from fuel dissolution process is one of the important issues to secure the safety in reprocessing plant operation. In order to achieve the higher sludge recovery in the clarification stage, new clarification system which is an integrated technology of centrifugal device and filter unit has been developed for spent MOX fuel reprocessing. In this study, over-all clarification performance of this integrated system was evaluated on engineering scale. As results, total sludge recovery rate of more than 99.5 % was achieved in all test conditions by this system from the engineering test and this new clarification system showed excellent clarification performance. The sludge recovery rate of centrifugal device was influenced by test conditions and was in the range from 87 to 98 %. This study showed this technology is one of the promising clarification systems to improve the performance of sludge recovery greatly.