A preliminary study of pilot-scale electrolytic reduction of UO 2 using a graphite anode

Autor: Sun-Seok Hong, Seung-Chul Oh, Wooshin Park, Eun-Young Choi, Sang-Kwon Lee, Sung-Wook Kim, Jin-Mok Hur, Min Ku Jeon, Dong Hyun Heo
Rok vydání: 2017
Předmět:
Zdroj: Nuclear Engineering and Technology, Vol 49, Iss 7, Pp 1451-1456 (2017)
ISSN: 1738-5733
Popis: Finding technical issues associated with equipment scale-up is an important subject for the investigation of pyroprocessing. In this respect, electrolytic reduction of 1 kg UO 2 , a unit process of pyroprocessing, was conducted using graphite as an anode material to figure out the scale-up issues of the C anode-based system at pilot scale. The graphite anode can transfer a current that is 6–7 times higher than that of a conventional Pt anode with the same reactor, showing the superiority of the graphite anode. UO 2 pellets were turned into metallic U during the reaction. However, several problems were discovered after the experiments, such as reaction instability by reduced effective anode area (induced by the existence of Cl 2 around anode and anode consumption), relatively low metal conversion rate, and corrosion of the reactor. These issues should be overcome for the scale-up of the electrolytic reducer using the C anode.
Databáze: OpenAIRE