Year
2021
Abstract
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Y-12 National Security Complex have collaborated to design and fabricate a mobile highly enriched uranium hexafluoride (HEUF6) recovery system to support the uranium recovery mission of the NA-232 Office of Nuclear Material Removal. If a cylinder of UF6 is presented to the MUF team, a non-destructive analysis will be conducted to confirm the integrity of the vessel, assay, and quantity of material. After it is determined that the cylinder is safe to handle, the material is HEUF6, and the cylinder is not overfilled, the HEUF6 will be vapor transferred from a warmed cylinder under negative pressure onto activated γ-alumina. Once the traps are determined to be fully loaded using gravimetric and thermal analysis, the uranium-laden alumina will be transferred into shippable containers using a HEPA vacuum. The four-trap processing system will be operated by flowing in series through each trap and was designed to fit inside of a single CONEX shipping container. If it appears that the HEUF6 is channeling or the trap residence time is too short, the flow can be adjusted, and the outlet of each trap can be closed to ensure full saturation of the sorbent. To ensure all of the materials and equipment used to fabricate the system are operational, a full-scale demonstration using water vapor as a surrogate for UF6 was carried out, and a half-scale two trap demonstration using a two trap system will be tested to ensure that all of the components are compatible with UF6. This presentation will review the results of both the full scale and half-scale demonstrations, discuss the similarities between the operation of the two systems, and compare the results to the initial bench scale studies. Initial surrogate testing indicated that the MUF processing system is fully operational under the conditions required for loading.