Development of a selective americium separation process using TPAEN as a water-soluble stripping agent

C. Marie (1) , M.-T. Duchesne (1) , E. Russello (1) , P. Kaufholz (2) , A. Wilden (2) , G. Modolo (2) , M. Miguirditchian (1) , A. Casnati (3)

1 CEA-DES (ex-DEN) - CEA-Direction des Energies (ex-Direction de l'Energie Nucléaire)
2 IEK-6 - Institute for Energy and Climate Research - Nuclear Waste Management and Reactor Safety
3 Department of Chemistry, Life Sciences and Environmental Sustainability [Parma]

Recycling americium from spent fuels is an important option considered for the future nuclear cycle. The PUREX solvent extraction process can be used to separate U and Pu from a dissolution solution of spent fuel in nitric acid. Then in a second step americium should be separated from fission products and especially lanthanides but also from curium. For this purpose, a new liquid-liquid extraction process is under development using TODGA as an extractant in the organic phase and TPAEN as a selective Am stripping agent in the aqueous phase. With this promising system it is possible to co-extract Am, Cm and lanthanides at high acidity and then selectively strip americium from the loaded organic phase at pH around 1 with TPAEN. Batch data were acquired to evaluate best conditions to develop a liquid-liquid extraction flowsheet and the effect of several parameters on Am/Cm was evaluated like concentration of ligand, cations, temperature, etc.

Domains: Nuclear Experiment [nucl-ex]; Nuclear Theory [nucl-th]

C. Marie, M.-T. Duchesne, E. Russello, P. Kaufholz, A. Wilden, et al.. Development of a selective americium separation process using TPAEN as a water-soluble stripping agent. GLOBAL 2015 - "Nuclear Energy: Industry Outlook & Prospects", Sep 2015, Paris, France. ⟨cea-02500841⟩