Treatment of Off-Gases Arising from the Treatment of Advanced Reactor Used Nuclear Fuel

AUTHORS
Sven Bader, David Pittman, Craig Huang, Jacob Riesenweber, and Peter Henry
Orano Federal Services

PRESENTING
March 12, 2025 - Entire white paper will be posted here
Waste Management Symposia

ABSTRACT
Under the U.S. DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy’s (ARPA-E) Optimizing Nuclear Waste and Advanced Reactor Disposal Systems (ONWARDS) program, Orano is leading a team designing a modular “plug-n-play” off-gas treatment system under the project titled Commutable, Adaptive Process for the Treatment of UNF Radioactive Exhaust (CAPTURE). This modular system is designed to flexibly treat off-gases from multiple types of used nuclear fuel (UNF) treatment or conditioning facilities including, but not limited to recycling facilities using aqueous separations (e.g., PUREX) or pyro-processing (e.g., using an electro-refiner) and fuel conditioning processes (e.g., in-line fuel treatment in a molten salt reactor, MSR). The produced modules utilize both state-of-the-art capture units (e.g., metal organic frameworks, MOFs) and “tried and true” capture approaches (e.g., HEPA filtration). The overall intent is to design a system that can be plugged into the off-gas from a specific treatment facility and treat the off-gases in an effective and optimal manner so that regulatory limits are met (e.g., 40CFR190), while ensuring the produced wastes are disposable (i.e., as low-level wastes) or suitable for decay storage.

The objectives of the CAPTURE team are to develop treatment modules to process off-gases from advanced reactor UNF treatment facilities in an effective (meet regulatory limits), flexible (modular design), efficient (high availability and cost effective), and safe (e.g., minimization/elimination of hazardous treatment units) manner. In addition, the modules allow for the opportunity to collect off-gases in a manner such that those gases with commercial value can be separated from other radiological materials. For example, MOFs are being demonstrated by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) as part of this project to selectively and separately adsorb xenon and krypton (including Kr-85) from the process off-gases and afterwards the separated xenon and krypton can be separately desorbed from the MOFs and commercially sold.

This paper covers these topics in more detail and demonstrates how the overall objective to produce a flexible off-gas treatment system for all advanced reactor UNF treatment facilities with state-of-art treatment, industrialization, and lifecycle management is met. This includes providing examples of the design of specific treatment modules (including associated piping and instrument drawings, P&IDs) and providing examples of the application of these modules to specific facility types (including associated process flow diagrams).

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