[ RadSafe ] Spent Fuel, Fuel Rod Bundles, Reprocessing, Robotics, etc.

Mon May 20 16:20:24 CDT 2013

Dear Jerry Cohen/Radsafe:

     Hey, if you want to toss the pellets and fuel  cladding etc. into a 
vat of acid or whatever, be my guest.
Nobody in the USA is going to do reprocessing anyway????

     Yes, I'm sure separating the cladding from the  fuel pellets would 
involve some processing person receiving some dose while  doing the processing.

     If you separate the cladding from the pellets (if  it could be done 
easily!!!!), then one could just ship the cladding to Yucca  Mountain and do 
no further processing to it.  The pellets could then be  tossed into the acid 
and/or solvent and processed further.  The separation  of the cladding and 
pellets might help to minimize the eventual waste which  occurs from the 
processing???

    But hey, if you want to toss the fuel bundles all  together into the 
acid or processing solvent be my guest.
JJC, you think like a Health Physicist who is old school and I can  
appreciate that.  Many interesting ways of doing Health Physics and  Radiation 
Protection were done in an old school manner back in the day.
Hopefully Health Physics and Radiation Protection continues to evolve and  
get better with time.

   Some of the Old School crap that went on in the National  Labs (USA) is 
not really acceptable anymore.
One colleague of mine at a National Lab got cancer in his lower abdomen  
because some old school
HP was too busy to figure out that this gentleman was sitting too close to  
a calibration area.  The whole layout of the calibration area was  
eventually redesigned.

    At another location at the same National Lab, someone  was too busy to 
install a proper shielding system at a location where proton  activation of 
materials was going on.  I wandered into this building one  day with a 
neutron detector and figured out that the technician operating this  facility was 
getting 10 mrem or more an hour, when the activations were taking  place.  
I was asked to modify the shielding and did so.

   I won't go into the Old School Health Physics horror stories I  heard 
about what happened at one old reactor at the Laboratory.  Funny, the  
Laboratory's Medical Department had all kinds of interesting neutron irradiation  
facilities for patient treatment that were used in the good old days.  From  
what I can tell and have heard, those neutron irradiation facilities are no  
longer at the laboratory.  The basic ideas of these neutron irradiation  
facilities seemed to be well-based.  Far as I can tell, good neutron  
spectrometry/dosimetry always lags behind good photon/gamma spectrometry.

    Sorry, I digressed.  Toss the fuel cladding and  pellets all together 
into the acid and/or solvents.  It doesn't make any  difference to me.  But, 
as always, the DOE, EPA, NRC etc. will be  watching....

    Have a good week...    Joe Preisig

In a message dated 5/20/2013 3:41:11 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
jjc105 at yahoo.com writes:

Why not  just dissolve the whole thing, fuel pellets and clading in nitric 
acid ,  
or other suitable solvent and proceed from there. I thought fuel  
reproocessing 
was a relatively well established technology in Pu  production and, to a 
small 
extent in reprocessing commercial nuclesr fuel.  I cannot understand the 
"need" 
for extracting the fuel from the cladding  as a first step. Please explain.
Jerry  Cohen

________________________________
From: "JPreisig at aol.com"  <JPreisig at aol.com>
To: radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu
Sent: Tue, May  14, 2013 11:35:51 AM
Subject: [ RadSafe ] Spent Fuel, Fuel Rod Bundles,  Reprocessing, Robotics, 
etc.

Dear Radsafe:

Hey  All.  Hope you are having a good  week.  Get Well Soon,  Franz!!!!

I know this email won't be the end-all in  a  discussion of Fuel Rods, 
Spent Fuel Reprocessing, Robotics, etc.,  so here goes  anyway.

I guess reprocessing will  eventually take fuel rod  bundles from dry 
storage casks and place  them in an area where they are isolated  from 
people 
and can be  handled robotically.  The reprocessing  operator/technican 
would  
probably have some hand-like robotic controls which can  be used to  grasp 
and move fuel bundles as needed..  Maybe a first task   would be taking 
each 
fuel bundle and placing it in the vicinity of a band  saw,  welding torch, 
laser, etc. which could be used to make linear  cuts across the  fuel 
bundles for 

the process of separating the  fuel pellets from the fuel  rods.

So, one question  is (generally???) if one cuts in a  direction 
perpendicular to each  fuel rod bundle's main axis, can one extricate  
multiple 
fuel  

pellets with one cut???  Are the fuel pellets in say 6 fuel   rods in a 
bundle at the same linear position????  How many fuel  pellets are  in one 
fuel 
rod????

The next  question is, once the cut across a fuel rod is  made, will the 
fuel  pellets fall out of the fuel rod easily, or will more  mechanical  
encouragement/handling be needed????

After the fuel  pellets are all collected in a bucket, or  some 
container, then what  happens next???
Are the fuel pellets placed in some acid or some other  chemical for 
further 
processing????  I know Jaro and other people on  Radsafe are more familiar  
in what processing will take place after  this point.  and I'm sure one  
email and/or more has already  been sent to Radsafe concerning spent fuel   
reprocessing.

Anyway, I've opened up this can of  worms for today  (again).  Direct 
your comments/suggestions to  Radsafe...Can robotic etc.  reprocessing of 
spent 
reactor fuel be  done at all, or in an economically viable  manner????

Thanks for you comments...

Regards,  Joseph  R. (Joe) Preisig,  Ph.D.

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