OUTLOOKS OF HLW PARTITIONING TECHNOLOGIES USAGE FOR RECOVERING OF PLATINUM METALS FROM SPENT FUEL

The existing practice of management of high level waste (HLW) generated by NPPs, call for a task of selective separation of the most dangerous long-lived radionuclides with the purpose of their subsequent immobilization and disposal. HLW partitioning allows to reduce substantially the cost of vitrified product storage owing to isolation of the most dangerous radionuclides, such as transplutonium elements (TPE) into separate fractions of small volumes, intended for ultimate storage. By now numerous investigations on partitioning of HLW of various composition have been carried out in many countries and a lot of processes permitting to recover cesium, strontium, TPE and rare earth elements (REE) have been already tested. Apart from enumerated radionuclides, a fair quantity of palladium and rhodium presents in spent fuel, but the problem of these elements recovery has not yet been decided at the operating radiochemical plants. A negative effect of platinum group metals (PGM) occurrence is determined by the formation of separate metal phase, which not only worsens the conditions of glass-melting but also shortens considerably the service life of the equipment. At the same time, the exhaustion of PGMs natural resources may finally lead to such a growth of their costs that the spent nuclear fuel would became a substituting source of these elements industrial production. Allowing above mentioned, it is of interest to develop the technique for ''reactor'' palladium and rhodium recovery process which would be compatible with HLW partitioning and could be realized using the same facilities. In the report the data on platinum metals distribution in spent fuel reprocessing products and the several flowsheets for palladium separation from HLW are presented.