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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.”
Michael A. Vest, Gerald K. Johnson, R. Dean Pierce, Eugene J. Wesolowski
Nuclear Technology | Volume 120 | Number 3 | December 1997 | Pages 243-252
Technical Note | Nuclear Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT97-A35415
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The operation and design of an inductively heated, bench-scale distillation furnace (retort) are described. The furnace is used as part of a pyrochemical process for the electrometallurgical treatment of spent light water reactor fuel. The focus is on the components that contain the metal melts and vapors. The forerunner of this paper focuses on the design of the induction power system. The equipment was designed to separate volatile from nonvolative metals; after separation, the nonvolatile metals are consolidated into a stillpot product. Twelve experimental runs were conducted; in seven, we used zinc as the distillate, and in five we used zinc-magnesium. In one of the runs, uranium was the stillpot product, and in two runs, copper was used as a substitute for uranium. After solving problems caused by violent evaporation, reboiling of the collected distillate, and blockage of the vapor path, we were able to evaporate the zinc and magnesium with distillate losses <6%. In some cases, the loss was as low as 0.3%. The stillpot product was successfully consolidated. Complete recovery of the stillpot product was achieved in one run.