Decontamination americium-curium

The development of the program for the production of transplutonium elements, americium 241, americium 243 and curium 244 in France required a major effort from the technological and chemical standpoints. Pre-existing hot cells were reconditioned and others were specially built for these production operations. From the chemical standpoint, the development of extractive chromatography on the preparative scale has allowed the definition of simple processes whose performance characteristics in our operating conditions have proved to be better than those obtained by liquid-liquid extraction. This type of process, initially developed for the treatment of Pu/Al targets, is ideal for the treatment of industrial wastes for their decontamination and for the production of americium 241. 

Dissolution, described in Sec. 4.4, produces an aqueous solution of uranyl nitrate, plutonium(IV) nitrate, nitric acid, small concentrations of neptunium, americium, and curium nitrates, and almost all of the nonvolatile fission products in the fuel. With fuel cooled 150 days after bumup of 33,000 MWd/MT, the fission-product concentration is around 1700 Ci/liter. The fint step in the solvent extraction portion of the Purex process is primary decontamination, in which from 99 to 99.9 percent of these fission products are separated from the uranium and plutonium. Early removal of the fission products reduces the amount of required shielding, simplifies maintenance, and facilitates later process operations by reducing solvent degradation from radiolysis. 

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