Assessment of a High-Throughput Electrorefining Concept for a Spent Metallic Nuclear Fuel - II: Electrohydrodynamic Analysis and Validation

Assessment of a high-throughput electrorefiner for a spent metallic fuel was carried out by using a commercial computational fluid dynamics code, CFX, and its performance was validated experimentally with a surrogate material. An electrorefiner equipped with a graphite cathode bundle was designed to continuously recover a high-purity uranium product without a noble metal contamination. The performance of the process for a decontamination of a noble metal in a uranium product was evaluated numerically as a function of the process parameters such as the rotation speed of the stirrer and the anode basket, and was validated experimentally. The distributions of the electric field and the electrodeposition behavior were also evaluated numerically, and an optimum electrode configuration was suggested.