LABORATORY DEVELOPMENT OF A COMBINED CHLORIDE VOLATILITY-AQUEOUS PROCESSING METHOD FOR URANIUM-ZIRCONIUM NUCLEAR FUELS

The operations in a process proposed for recovering uranium from spent uranium-- zirconium alloy fuels, including collecting the volatilized chlorination products (mainiy zirconium tetrachioride and uranium pentachloride) in boiling water, concentrating the resulting solution, lowering the freezing point by removing chloride with hydrogen peroxide, and recovering uranium from the 5 M Zr product solution by solvent extraction with tributyl phosphate in Amsco diluent, were investigated in the laboratory and appeared to be reducible to large-scale practice. The high temperature chlorination equipment would also be adaptable for burning graphite matrix fuels and when combined with Darex equipment for processing fuels containing stainless steel, molybdenum, or aluminum may provide the basis for a feasible universal fuel processing system. (auth