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N°Spécial De Revue/Special Issue Science Talks Année : 2023

Chemical composition of aerosols generated by heating prototypic fuel debris samples

Résumé

One of the important challenges for the decommissioning of the damaged reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (1F) is the fuel debris retrieval. In this context, the URASOL (URAnium and aeroSOL) project has been undertaken by the French consortium laboratories consisting of ONET, CEA, and IRSN for JAEA/CLADS. It aims at acquiring basic data on the generation and characteristics of radioactive aerosols from the thermal or mechanical processing of fuel debris simulant. Prototypic fuel debris samples were fabricated at VULCANO facility based on the average of the lower head compositions computed in the OECD/BSAF benchmark. Samples were heated in the VITAE (Aerosols configuration of the VITI facility) induction furnace to simulate thermal cutting (e.g. by laser) and released aerosols were collected during three temperature ramps using impactors. The collected aerosols were chemically analyzed by ICP-AES and ICP-MS. Overall, iron and tin are the major elements found in these aerosols, followed by chromium and silicon. Uranium contributes to 1.8 wt% of the measured elements. Significant releases of tellurium, barium and cerium were observed, mainly in ramp 1 (20-1800 °C). A significant variation of releases with temperature and with aerosol size class were also observed. Finally, comparison with a simulant fuel debris, in which hafnium replaced uranium mole by mole, confirmed that uranium is significantly more released than the simulant, emphasizing the interest of carrying out experiments with prototypic materials.

Domaines

Matériaux
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Dates et versions

cea-04513057 , version 1 (20-03-2024)

Identifiants

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Christophe Journeau, Jules Delacroix, Célia Guevar, Veronique Testud, Emmanuelle Brackx, et al.. Chemical composition of aerosols generated by heating prototypic fuel debris samples. Science Talks, 6, pp.100215, 2023, ⟨10.1016/j.sctalk.2023.100215⟩. ⟨cea-04513057⟩
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