[ RadSafe ] A little more on the Reprocessing process

Tue May 21 20:46:25 CDT 2013

West Valley is definitely NOT a role model for the nuclear industry.  One
of my technicians at Argonne had worked there.  She said that the control
room operators pushed the 5 rem/year limit.  The hands on people depended
on the 3 rem/quarter, 5(N-18) limits.  In one noteworthy operation, a cask
with damaged fuel was opened in the pool, with a cloud of fuel fragments
emerging.  The operators failed to shut down the fuel pool cleanup systems,
resulting in filters with "screaming" rad levels.  The filter housings were
poorly designed.  Several bolts had to be removed to change each filter.
 To accomplish this, the plant recruited "sponges" from skid row, in
Buffalo. After a quick training course, they became "rad workers."  Each
person worked for a few minutes, maybe giving a bolt a few turns, until
reaching the 3 rem limit.  They were then laid off.  (I am guessing that
some of them returned  under a different name.)  Definitely NOT ALARA.

The burial ground next to the plant was also poorly designed.  The trenches
were impermeable, but the trench caps were not.  Since it occasionally
snows in Buffalo, the trenches were snow covered during the winter.  In the
spring, it was discovered that many of the trenches had collapsed, with
water overflowing the trenches, called the "bathtub effect."  When I
visited, in 1980, both the plant and disposal facility were closed, but the
trenches had to be continually pumped out, with the water stored in huge
lagoons.

Bill Lipton
It's not about dose, it's about trust.

On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 7:51 PM, Yahoo Mail Inc <jjc105 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Thanks Tim,
>     In the late 1960's, as a refugee from the recently defunct Plowshare
> program, I was directed to learn everything about nuclear waste management.
> (Underground disposal of nucwaste into cavities created by underground
> nuclear
> explosions was thought to be a viable option at the time) It seemed that
> the
> best place to learn was at the West Valley plant, so I was sent there to
> become
> an "overnight expert".  I will always be grateful for the time and
> patience they
> gave me. Too bad the operation at West Valley was not allowed to continue.
> Perhaps, if it had, we might not be facing the impass we are in. The safe
> and
> economic management of nuclear waste should never have become the
> intractable
> problem that it has. Too bad that it has become a problem to be studied,
> and not
> one to be solved.
> Jerry Cohen
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Timothy Rice <tbrice at gw.dec.state.ny.us>
> To: radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu
> Sent: Tue, May 21, 2013 5:40:39 AM
> Subject: [ RadSafe ] A little more on the Reprocessing process
>
> Jerry and Franz,
> At the former commercial West Valley spent fuel reprocessing facility
> incoming
> fuel was cut into short segments using a hydraulic shear, and the cladding
> segments and contained fuel dropped into a transfer basket (no need to
> physically extract the fuel out of the segments of cladding).  A bit of a
> "brute
> force" approach but simple and efficient, though it did leave some
> residual fuel
> fines on the floor of the cell where the shearing was performed. The
> basket was
> then transferred to a separate hot cell where the fuel (but not the
> cladding)
> was dissolved in acid prior to the extraction process. The remaining
> segments of
> cladding, referred to as "hulls", were removed and sent for disposal in an
> on-site NRC-licensed disposal facility referred to by the workers as the
> hull
> burial area.
>
> Hope that helps,
> Tim
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Mon, 20 May 2013 21:54:49 +0200
> From: Franz Sch?nhofer <franz.schoenhofer at chello.at>
> Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Spent Fuel, Fuel Rod Bundles, Reprocessing,
>     Robotics,    etc.
> To: "The International Radiation Protection \(Health Physics\) Mailing
>     List"    <radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu>
> Message-ID: <7B5A1AE9F353400A95C074E84B9C51FE at fPC>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
>     reply-type=original
>
> Jerry,
>
> If memory serves me well (and I am sure it does!) then the first step in
> reprocessing is cutting the fuel rods into small pieces and then proceed
> with dissolving cladding and fuel in suitable acids and treat the solution
> according to its chemical composition to retrieve the plutonium and/or
> uranium in a pure form while simultaneously separating it from fission
> products. In other words, it is done exactly as you describe it.
>
> Best regard
>
> Franz
>
> -----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
> From: Yahoo Mail Inc
> Sent: Monday, May 20, 2013 9:40 PM
> To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Spent Fuel, Fuel Rod Bundles, Reprocessing,
> Robotics,etc.
>
> 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
>
>
>
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