Zinc distillation fuels

Zinc Distillation Process ( 3, 4 ). A zinc distillation process was selected as a reference pyrochemical process that would have a sufficient degree of proliferation resistance that it could be used by nonweapons nations to reprocess spent fuel without significantly increasing their weapons production capability. The process has the inherent proliferation-resistant advantages of being a low decontamination process with limited plutonium enrichment in uranium-plutonium-zinc mixtures. The process chemistry flow sheet for this process is shown in Figure 1. 

The zinc distillation process consists of four basic operations to coprocess and recover uranium and plutonium containing fission products from spent FBR mixed-oxide fuels. These operations are ... 

After decladding is completed, the zinc-cladding alloy is separated from the oxide fuel and cover salt. The zinc is recovered by distillation for recycle. 

Because both zinc and magnesium are volatile, these acceptor alloy elements are separated from the actinides by vacuum distillation. The zinc-magnesium overhead product from vacuum distillation is recycled. After the volatile solvent metals are removed, the resultant distillation bottom products (U-Pu for core fuel and U for blanket fuel) are converted to suitable oxides by reaction with oxygen. The oxide products are available for refabrication into new fuel. The FP-3 elements that follow plutonium and the... 

At the tail end of a solvent extraction process, the solvents are separated from the solutes for recycle. In this application of solvent extraction, vacuum distillation is used to separate volatile zinc and magnesium from coprocessed uranium and plutonium and from the uranium product. Feed to vacuum distillation is solid alloy. Overhead and bottom products are likwise cast into a solid alloy. These vacuum distillation operations are conducted in separate cells. The actinide products are converted to oxide for fuel fabrication. 

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