Assessment of a High-Throughput Electrorefining Concept for a Spent Metallic Nuclear Fuel - I: Computational Fluid Dynamics Analysis

Numerical assessment of a high-throughput electrorefining concept for a spent metallic fuel was carried out by using a commercial computational fluid dynamics code, CFX. An electrorefiner concept equipped with a graphite cathode bundle was designed to recover a high-purity uranium product continuously without a noble metal contamination. The performance of the process for the decontamination of a noble metal in a uranium product was evaluated as a function of the process parameters, such as the rotation speeds of the stirrer and the anode basket. The effects of the void fraction of the anode basket cavity and the morphology of the uranium dendrite on the molten-salt flow and collection behavior were also evaluated with the calculated results.