Abstract

The nuclear industry is seeking a method for recycling spent fuel which mainly consists of long-lived radioactive actinides. Incorporating the spent fuel into an inert matrix (neutron transparent) is one of the proposed solutions for recycling spent fuel. The current study aims at reducing the overall processing time and temperature to minimize the actinide loss (that will be incorporated in pellets) while maintaining at least 90 % theoretical density in inert matrix materials.

The effect of different processing routes on bulk density and microstructure were evaluated. The results obtained by adopting microwave sintering for 8 mol% yttria-zirconia were compared to the values obtained for conventional sintering. A 20 min soak time at 1300oC resulted in pellets with 90% theoretical density for microwave-processed samples, compared to 77% dense pellets processed conventionally. A similar density was obtained at lower temperature (1200oC) by increasing the soak time to 100 min in microwave processing unlike 60 % theoretical density observed in a conventionally processed pellet.

 

Biography

Raghu received his B.Tech in Metallurgical Engineering from JNTU College of Engineering in India in 2003, and MS in Chemical Engineering from University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D degree under the direction of Prof. David Clark. His research mainly focuses on microwave processing of materials.