Accelerated Dissolution Process of the Spent Fuel (UO2) under Repository Conditions

Abstract

AbstractNowadays, nuclear energy is one of the options for developed countries in order to maintain the demand of electric energy. One of the problems of this kind of energy generation is the residual waste form after a fuel cycle (spent fuel). These kind of material is so difficult to characterize -due to their composition and the thermal treatment in the reactor- that exhaustive studies are necessaries for a complete knowledge, helping to build, with complete reliability, a very safety underground facility. In this way, the option known as Deep Geological Repository (DGR) is been developed by each country taking part in the nuclear energy industry. The unique via for the migration to the biosphere of the radionuclides -actinides and lanthanides content in the spent fuel pellet (UO2) after the closing of the deep geological repository is by the water transport phenomena. It is a fundamental question to know how much time they will spend in their trip; and the first step is the rate of liberation of these radionuclides from the spent fuel pellet. In this way, the matrix dissolution rate of the spent fuel pellet no dependent on the specific surface area after a normalization by the initial value- is a key parameter to begin the performance assessment for any deep geological repository and the specific surface value is, following the Matrix Alteration Model (MAM) sensitivity analysis, one of the most important parameters controlling the radionuclides liberation. In this way, several measurements were carried out to obtain values in different conditions for different sieves of UO2 powder, treated as fresh fuel. First of all, the specific surface area was measured with a multi-point isothermal procedure with N2 and Kr, the both. The values obtained were presented in order to obtain a general law for the evolution with the particle size. These data are part of a bigger project about the complete description of the spent fuel analogous; very useful to obtain new dissolution rates for the spent fuel under repository simulated conditions.