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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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Strontium: Supply-and-demand success for the DOE’s Isotope Program
The Department of Energy’s Isotope Program (DOE IP) announced last week that it would end its “active standby” capability for strontium-82 production about two decades after beginning production of the isotope for cardiac diagnostic imaging. The DOE IP is celebrating commercialization of the Sr-82 supply chain as “a success story for both industry and the DOE IP.” Now that the Sr-82 market is commercially viable, the DOE IP and its National Isotope Development Center can “reassign those dedicated radioisotope production capacities to other mission needs”—including Sr-89.
Rajesh K. Ahluwalia, Thanh Q. Hua, Howard K. Geyer
Nuclear Technology | Volume 133 | Number 1 | January 2001 | Pages 103-118
Technical Paper | Reprocessing | doi.org/10.13182/NT01-A3162
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
During electrorefining of irradiated, binary U-Zr Experimental Breeder Reactor II fuel, a portion of zirconium is found to dissolve along with uranium. It accumulates in the cadmium pool both as dissolved zirconium and as a zirconium-cadmium intermetallic precipitate. Two electrochemical methods of removing zirconium from the electrorefiner have been evaluated. The first is a three-step method consisting of chemical oxidation of zirconium by CdCl2 addition, depletion of zirconium from the cadmium pool by electrotransport, and drawdown of zirconium from the LiCl-KCl eutectic salt by using a different electrorefiner configuration. A transport model is employed to determine the cell operating conditions for growing pure zirconium deposits and the throughput rate. The second method eliminates the chemical oxidation step and permits codeposition of uranium and zirconium onto the solid cathode. The transport model is used to assess the level of uranium impurity in the cathode product; an additional step is proposed to reoxidize uranium in the deposit. The two methods are compared from the standpoints of throughput, deposit composition, deposit adherence to a solid cathode mandrel, and the underlying uncertainties. A brief review is given of the related past laboratory work on removal of zirconium from the electrorefiner.