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Savannah River marks the closure of another legacy waste tank
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has received concurrence from regulators that Tank 14 at the Savannah River Site has reached preliminary cease waste removal (PCWR) status after radioactive liquid waste was successfully removed from the tank. PCWR is a regulatory milestone in the closure of SRS’s old-style waste tanks, which were built in the 1950s to store waste generated by the chemical separations of plutonium and uranium.
R. Puspalata, S. Sumathi, V. Balaji, S. Rangarajan, S. Velmurugan
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 4 | April 2019 | Pages 592-604
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1509586
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The main objective of this work is to see the feasibility of using an electrochemical ion-exchange process in line with decontamination for removal of radioactive metal ions from simulated decontaminated solution/metal ion–loaded cation-exchange resin. This could extend the service period of resin, and the volume of radioactive resin (organic) waste generation could be minimized. Simulated decontamination solutions/spent resins were used in the middle section of a three-compartment cell separated by cation-permeable Nafion membranes. Metal ions from this central compartment permeated through the membrane and got deposited on the cathode by application of potential. Process parameters like applied voltage, interelectrode distance, pH, decontamination formulations, and type of membrane were optimized for efficient transport of metal ions. The resin life was observed to be extended by 5 h by an electrochemical regeneration process with Nafion membrane N115. The transport process, as monitored by the change in metal ion concentration in the cathodic compartment, was observed to pass through a maximum. Maximum metal ion removal was observed with formic acid/formate formulation indicating that the presence of acidity in the anodic compartment has a synergistic effect on the transport process. The cathodic compartment deposit was characterized by X-ray diffraction, laser Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and energy dispersive X-ray analysis.