Light Water Reactor Fuel Reprocessing program. Quarterly progress report for the period ending March 31, 1977

Standard nozzle plate cartridges were operated under a cross section of light water reactor (LWR) Purex flowsheet conditions to provide baseline data on pulse column throughput capacities. End stream samples were taken for future reference, but efficiency calculations were not made. The main effort was concentrated on the extraction section performance. However, information was also obtained on uranium strip and solvent wash columns, since these are required in a service capacity to allow reuse of both the solvent and the uranium nitrate solution. The major observations from these baseline tests are as follows: (1) The extraction section promises to have high capacity using nozzle plates with either /sup 1///sub 8/- or /sup 3///sub 16/-in. diam holes. No change in capacity was noted as a function of pulse amplitude over the range of 1 to 2 in. (2) The scrub section floods more readily than the extraction section at 1AP solvent loadings above 95 g U/liter. Scrub section flooding can be more easily prevented or cleared using a dual pulse. (3) The uranium strip column has a more limited throughput capacity than the extraction section, as expected. (4) The solvent wash column operation continues to appear promising. No problem, such as those noted in the literature, was observed with very low capacity. The capacity and recoverability from flooding were improved by doubling the pulse amplitude from 1 to 2 in.