Use of Gadolinium as a Primary Criticality Control in Disposing Waste Containing Plutonium at SRS

Use of gadolinium as a neutron poison has been proposed for disposing of several metric tons of excess plutonium at the Savannah River Site (SRS). The plutonium will first be dissolved in nitric acid in small batches. Gadolinium nitrate will then be added to the plutonium nitrate solution. The Gd-poisoned plutonium solution will be neutralized and transferred to large under-ground tanks. The pH of small batches of neutralized plutonium solution will be adjusted prior to addition of the glass frit for eventual production as glass logs. The use of gadolinium as the neutron poison would minimize the number of glass logs generated from this disposition. The primary criticality safety concerns regarding the disposal process are: (1) maintaining neutron moderation under all processing conditions since gadolinium has a very large absorption cross section for thermal neutrons, (2) characteristics of plutonium and gadolinium precipitation during the neutralization process, (3) mixing characteristics of the precipitate to ensure that plutonium would remain homogeneously mixed with gadolinium, and (4) potential separation of plutonium and gadolinium during nitric and formic acids addition. A number of experiments were conducted at the Savannah River National Laboratory to study the behavior of plutonium and gadolinium at various stages of the disposition process