Engineering-Scale Liquid Cadmium Cathode Experiments Page: 3 of 6
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Vaden et al. LIQUID Cd CATHODE EXPERIMENTS
electrorefiner salt. Unless the TRU material is extracted,
it will continue to accumulate until the salt, still contain-
ing large amounts of TRU material, is removed from the
electrorefiner and converted into a ceramic waste form
for disposal in the repository. The method currently avail-
able to extract kilogram quantities of plutonium and other
TRUs from the electrorefiner at the Idaho National Lab-
oratory (INL) is the liquid cadmium cathode (LCC).
Earlier TRU recovery work proving the concept of elec-
trochemical transport using liquid cathodes had been per-
formed at the laboratory scale (gram quantities of TRU
recovered) in Japan,2 in France,3 in Illinois4 (at the Ar-
gonne National Laboratory), and in Idaho5 (at the INL).
This paper discusses TRU recovery experiments per-
formed in an engineering-scale electrorefiner at the INL
to collect kilogram quantities of uranium and plutonium
into an LCC.
II. EXPERIMENTAL
The electrorefiner used for the TRU recovery exper-
iments is a steel vessel 1 m in height with a 1-m inside
diameter containing molten salt, primarily LiCl-KCl,
maintained at 773 K. Figure 1 is a schematic of the INL
electrorefiner that processes EBR-II blanket fuel.
The anode basket (Fig. 2) used in each TRU recov-
ery experiment is a steel vessel with perforated sides and
bottom that can hold a maximum of 25 kg of cladding
and heavy metal from EBR-II blanket fuel. The compo-
sition of EBR-II blanket fuel is shown in Table I. The
cathode used in each experiment was a crucible made
- I
SI\II(ONI\ _ '
N\SAI h NI I
\VFI)Ul - - -I
u i -F-I[- 4
Iu or -lAI _o - CCIU L
SL~ ~ ~ I'OR "'Fig. 1. Mark-V electrorefiner.
2I
Fig. 2. Anode basket used in TRU recovery experiments.
TABLE I
Composition of EBR-II Blanket Fuel
Nuclide Average Maximum Minimum
238U (%) 98.94 99.63 97.86
239Pu (%) 0.80 1.57 0.14
235U (%) 0.20 0.22 0.18
Nd (ppm) 92 246 8
Ce (ppm) 53 142 4
La (ppm) 29 77 2
Pr (ppm) 27 73 2
237Np (ppm) 11 22 1
241Am (ppb) 776 8300 2
from beryllium oxide containing 26 kg of cadmium. Fig-
ure 3 contains photographs of the LCC electrode assem-
bly and a new cadmium ingot. The white sections of the
assembly (crucible, crucible containment blocks, paddle,
and upper portion of the electrode) are composed of be-
ryllium oxide. The lower 1.3 cm of the electrode is metal,
which conducts current to the liquid cadmium.
The role of the paddle in the LCC assembly was to
push material depositing on the cadmium surface into the
liquid cadmium. The paddle rotated and oscillated up and
down during the experiments. To mitigate the displace-
ment of cadmium from the crucible, the paddle operation
was such that its "down" position was set at a specified
distance above the cadmium surface. When a sufficient125
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Vaden, D.; Westphal, B. R.; Li, S. X.; Johnson, T. A.; Davies, K. B. & Pace, D. M. Engineering-Scale Liquid Cadmium Cathode Experiments, article, August 1, 2006; [Idaho Falls, Idaho]. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc892996/m1/3/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.