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North American construction is back—smaller and faster—at OPG’s Darlington
“The nuclear renaissance is real here,” said Ontario Power Generation’s Subo Sinnathamby on May 8, one year to the day after OPG secured a final investment decision to build the first of four planned BWRX-300 reactors at its Darlington nuclear power plant, and shortly after the new reactor’s foundation was lifted into place. “We got our license to construct in April and our [final investment decision] in May, and we’ve been off to the races since.”
Darryl D. Siemer
Nuclear Technology | Volume 185 | Number 1 | January 2014 | Pages 100-108
Technical Note | Reprocessing | doi.org/10.13182/NT12-164
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The fuel reprocessing (recycling) system invoked by the developers of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's molten salt–based breeder (of 233U from 232Th) reactor (MSBR) would generate high-level reprocessing waste consisting of ∼3 mol % fission product fluoride salts in a matrix consisting primarily of sodium and potassium fluoride salts. This technical note discusses a management scenario for such waste that invokes the following steps: (a) mixing of the waste salt with dilute nitric acid with a pug mill; (b) volatilization/separation of the bulk of the fluoride as hydrofluoric acid (HF) with a wiped film evaporator; (c) vitrification of the thus “converted” (to nitrate) salt waste to an iron phosphate glass waste form with a stirred melter; (d) reduction of the nitric acid/NOx in the combined off-gas to elemental nitrogen with hot charcoal; (e) condensation of the water and HF in the reduced off-gas; (f) neutralization of that solution with an alkali (sodium and/or lithium and/or potassium) hydroxide; (g) drying of that solution to produce the fluoride salts utilized by the process; and finally, (h) off-gas disposal after treatment implemented with a condenser, wet electrostatic precipitator, catalytic converter, and high-efficiency particulate air filters. This scenario's advantages relative to those that invoke the preparation of a synthetic fluoride mineral (cation-substituted fluorapatite) waste form include much higher effective waste loading, lower cost, and a product (glass) more consistent with stakeholder expectations.