Completely Incinerable Extractants for the Nuclear Industry - A Review

Abstract

The paper is a review of the properties of the new extractants investigated in the author's laboratory during the last two decades for the chemical separations needed for the nuclear fuel cycle. The choice of the new extractants takes into account the desire to limit as much as possible the process waste. Four topics are discussed. I) The possible replacement of TBP by N,N-dialkylamides in the classical PUREX process {U and Pu recovery from irradiated nuclear fuels), or for other chemical separations. 2) The possible use of substituted 1,3-diamides propane for the decommissioning of a nuclear wastes containing Am(III), Cm(III) or other actinides in the tetra or hexavalent state. 3) The soft donor extractants for trivalent actinide-lanthanide group separations. 4) The exploration to find new extractants for separation of all the actinides (III, IV, VI) from the spent nuclear fuels, using only one extraction cycle, necessitating /?, y heavy shielding. The trivalent lanthanides must remain in the effluent for this separation.

Keywords:

• Actinides
• lanthanides
• N,N-dialkylamides
• diamides
• soft donors extractants
• TPTZ
• dialkyldithiophosphoric acids
• charge transfer spectra