Separation of high heat generating-radioactive isotopes from spent nuclear fuel is an important issue because it can reduce the final disposal area. As one of the technologies that can selectively separate only high heat generating-radioactive isotopes without dissolving spent fuel, the methods using molten salt have recently attracted attention. Although studies on chemical changes of Sr oxides in molten salts have been reported, they have limitation in that alternative oxide reagents rather than oxide fuel were used. In this study, the separation behaviors of Sr from simulated oxide fuel using various molten salts were investigated. A powder type containing 95.7wt% of U and 0.123wt% of Sr was used as the simulated oxide fuel. LiCl, LiCl-CaCl2, MgCl2, LiCl-KCl-MgCl2 and NaCl-MgCl2 were used as molten chloride salts. The separation of Sr from the simulated oxide fuel was conducted by loading it in porous alumina basket and immersing it in a salt. The concentration of Sr in the salt was measured by ICP analysis after sampling the salt outside the basket using dip-stick technique. The separation efficiencies of Sr from simulated oxide fuel using the salts were compared. Furthermore, the causes of their separation efficiency were systematically investigated.

• Eun-Young Choi(Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI), University of Science and Technology (UST)) Corresponding author
• Sang-Kwon Lee(Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI))
• Seungwoo Paek(Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI))
• Hamin Choi(Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI))
• Minsu Lee(University of Science and Technology (UST))
• DongHyun Jeon(Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI))
• Change Hwa Lee(Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI))