Development in Waste Volume Reduction Technologies for Highly Contaminated Organic Radioactive Compounds

In nuclear facilities, there is highly contaminated organic radioactive waste such as ion exchange resins for water purification in nuclear power plants. In the future, it is desired that this waste be decomposed to reduce the volume and to become stable. Toshiba has developed a waste treatment system using supercritical water. Furthermore, the new demineralization system without using ion exchange resin has been examined. By this new system, it is possible to reduce the volume of ion exchange resin waste. First, supercritical water was applied to the decomposition of ion exchange resin. The supercritical water whose temperature and pressure exceed 647 K and 22 MPa is an excellent solvent for organic compound decomposition, since oxygen and organic compounds can exist in a single homogeneous fluid phase. Organic compounds can be rapidly and completely decomposed using supercritical water. Almost all the reactants can be kept in the water during organic compound decomposition. Therefore, applying supercritical water to treat organic radioactive waste is an attractive proposition. Actual plant-size apparatus was constructed with a treatment capacity of 1 kg of ion exchange resin per hour. The test revealed that more than 99.9% of the ion exchange resin was decomposed at 723 K andmore » 30 MPa. By this system, ion exchange resin decomposes rapidly and completely, and the volume of ion exchange resin waste can be largely reduced. Secondly, the new demineralization system without using ion exchange resin is described. The new demineralization system consists of a filter and a demineralization cell. A metal mesh filter is adopted to remove crud, and the demineralization cell removes ionic impurities. In this system, it is important whether demineralization can take place at high temperature. Thus, this report describes the test results of the new demineralization process. This demineralization cell consists of an anode, a cathode, and a membrane made of inorganic material. The water containing ion species passes through the inside of the two films between electrodes. The ions pass a film according to an electric charge, and are collected into the room with an electrode. Since all these pieces of the cell consist of inorganic material, it is possible to supply high-temperature water to a direct system. In the bench-scale test, it was confirmed that 90% of cobalt and 80% of sulfuric ion was recovered at 553 K and 8 MPa. By this system, ion exchange resin is unnecessary, and the amount of ion exchange resin waste can be largely reduced. (authors)« less