Separation of uranium from technetium in recovery of spent nuclear fuel
AssigneeThe United States of America as represented by the United States Department of Energy
InventorHorace A. Friedman
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Abstract
A method for decontaminating uranium product from the Purex process comprises addition of hydrazine to the product uranyl nitrate stream from the Purex process, which contains hexavalent (UO.sub.2.sup.2+) uranium and heptavalent technetium (TcO.sub.4 -). Technetium in the product stream is reduced and then complexed by the addition of oxalic acid (H.sub.2 C.sub.2 O.sub.4), and the Tc-oxalate complex is readily separated from the uranium by solvent extraction with 30 vol. % tributyl phosphate in n-dodecane.
Claims2
In a spent nuclear fuel recovery process wherein a stream containing U and Tc.sup.+7 is contacted with an organic phase containing tributyl phosphate and an organic diluent to extract U and Tc.sup.+7 from said stream into said organic phase and subsequently U and Tc.sup.+7 are stripped from said organic phase into an aqueous solution, the improvement comprising:
- (1) contacting said aqueous solution with hydrazine and oxalic acid to thereby convert the Tc.sup.+7 therein to a reduced Tc species and form a soluble oxalate complex of said reduced Tc species;
- and
- (2) contacting said aqueous solution containing U and the complex of the reduced Tc species with an organic phase containing tributyl phosphate and an organic diluent to extract U from said aqueous solution into said organic phase while leaving substantially all of the reduced Tc species in the aqueous solution.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.