Lithium reduction of americium dioxide to generate americium metal

Abstract

The lithium reduction process has been developed for application to a pyrochemical recycle process for oxide fuels. This process uses lithium metal as a reductant to convert oxides of actinide elements to metal. Lithium oxide generated as a product of the reduction would be dissolved in a molten lithium chloride bath to enhance reduction. In this work, the reduction of americium dioxide to its metal was experimentally confirmed. At the end of the reduction, more than 99.9% of the Am was recovered from the salt phase to a solid Am phase. It was also shown that the lithium oxide concentration in lithium chloride is required to be kept under 5.1 wt%. When the concentration of lithium oxide was between 5.1 and 6.3 wt%, americium formed monoxide.