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NRC approves TerraPower construction permit
Today, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that it has approved TerraPower’s construction permit application for Kemmerer Unit 1, the company’s first deployment of Natrium, its flagship sodium fast reactor.
This approval is a significant milestone on three fronts. For TerraPower, it represents another step forward in demonstrating its technology. For the Department of Energy, it reflects progress (despite delays) for the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP). For the NRC, it is the first approval granted to a commercial reactor in nearly a decade—and the first approval of a commercial non–light water reactor in more than 40 years.
Yuichiro Asano, Noriko Asanuma, Toshihiko Ito, Makoto Kataoka, Shinya Fujino, Tomoo Yamamura, Wataru Sugiyama, Hiroshi Tomiyasu, Kunihiko Mizumachi, Yasuhisa Ikeda, Yukio Wada, Masami Asou
Nuclear Technology | Volume 120 | Number 3 | December 1997 | Pages 198-210
Technical Paper | Enrichment and Reprocessing System | doi.org/10.13182/NT97-A35411
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new reprocessing system for spent nuclear fuels based on a precipitation method is proposed to recover uranium and transuranium elements from spent nuclear fuels in high ratios and to achieve extreme safety without any potential dangers. Experiments were carried out for a simulated fuel solution containing uranium and 17 major elements. The main reprocessing processes are as follows: (a) dissolution of U02 fuel under mild conditions; (b) neutralization of the dissolved fuel solution with Na2C03-NaHC03 mixed solutions, followed by the separation of precipitated fission products by centrifugation; (c) separation of cesium by a precipitation method using a tetraphenylborate ion; and (d) recovery of uranium (U) as a precipitate of the hydrolyzed compound from an alkaline solution. As a result, 99.95% of the U was recovered with the least amount of fission products, i.e., 10-5 g or even less in the recovered 1 g of U with the only exceptions being zirconium and molybdenum.