Synthesis and characterization of uranium-bearing britholites

Abstract

Unlike thorium which incorporation is easy and quantitative in the britholite structure, that of tetravalent uranium appears rather difficult even after heating at high temperature. Indeed, only about 3.5 wt% of uranium (instead of 10.3 wt% expected) are incorporated in the britholite structure when using a manual grinding of the initial mixture while it is increased to 5.9 wt% when performing mechanical grinding/heating cycles. The optimized grinding and heating conditions can be fixed to 15 min at 30 Hz and to 1400 °C for 6 h, respectively. All the samples prepared at 1400 °C are found to be composed by (Nd, U)-britholite and calcium uranate CaU 2O 5+ y which formation results from that of CaUO 4 above 800 °C consequently to the direct reaction between UO 2 and CaO. The incorporation of tetravalent uranium in (Nd, U)-britholites begins simultaneously to the transformation of CaUO 4 into CaU 2O 5+ y above 1100 °C. Due to these redox reactions, the incorporation of uranium remains partial even though it is significantly increased at 1400 °C and mainly proceeds through diffusion phenomena. Two main methods can be used to improve significantly the incorporation of uranium in (Nd, U)-britholites. The first one deals with the compaction of the powdered initial mixture prior to perform the heating treatment at 1400 °C. The second one is based on the simultaneous incorporation of tetravalent thorium and uranium, leading to the formation of (Nd, Th, U)-britholites. Like for uranium, such methods could be of significant interest in the field of the incorporation of other tetravalent actinides, e.g. neptunium or plutonium, which could be also stabilized in several oxidation states.