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DOE, General Matter team up for new fuel mission at Hanford
The Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management (EM) on Tuesday announced a partnership with California-based nuclear fuel company General Matter for the potential use of the long-idle Fuels and Materials Examination Facility (FMEF) at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
According to the announcement, the DOE and General Matter have signed a lease to explore the FMEF's potential to be used for advanced nuclear fuel cycle technologies and materials, in part to help satisfy the predicted future requirements of artificial intelligence.
R. H. Rainey, J. G. Moore
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 10 | Number 4 | August 1961 | Pages 367-371
doi.org/10.13182/NSE61-A15380
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Acid Thorex process has been developed on a laboratory scale for recovery of uranium and thorium from spent fuel solutions. The thorium and uranium are extracted by tributyl phosphate (TBP) with only the thorium nitrate and nitric acid as “salting agents.” As compared to the present Thorex process in which aluminum nitrate is employed as a salting agent, a considerably greater reduction in aqueous waste volumes is possible. With a synthetic solution of Consolidated Edison Thorium Reactor fuel as feed, uranium and thorium were decontaminated from ruthenium, zirconium-niobium, protactinium, and rare earth elements by factors of 2,000, 30,000, 1,000, and 105, respectively. The concentrated aqueous waste volume was 0.2 liter per kilogram of thorium processed. These values compare favorably with corresponding decontamination factor values for the aluminum-salted Thorex system of 600, 3,000, 3,000, and 2 × 105 and volume of 2 liters per kilogram of thorium processed.