Introduction

Experimental

Results and discussion

Conclusion

References

Abstract

There are proliferation issues with the Plutonium Uranium Redox Extraction process due to the possibility of recovering plutonium. The objective of this research was to evaluate diferent organic extraction ligands that can remove uranium from the nuclear waste and to determine the most efective organic solvent for extracting uranium only, from alkaline media. The results indicate that Alamine 336 in xylene has zero (0%) extraction capability for surrogate fssion products at an optimum extraction time of 15 min. Aliquat 336 in xylene has an extraction percentage of 72% for uranium in 60 min. However, Aliquat 336 in toluene extracted 82% of the uranium from the feed solution after 30 min, decreasing to 76% after 60 min.

Introduction

A large amount of uranium in the environment is caused by human activities such as mining and milling of other minerals and also from operations of reactors, reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and its disposal [1, 2]. It is also of great commercial interest due to its application in the nuclear industry especially in the use and development of new radiopharmaceuticals and radioisotopes [3]. The uranium waste contains insoluble precipitates formed when the target plates uranium–aluminum alloy are dissolved during the production of Mo-99 [4]. The remaining insoluble residue contains about 90% of enriched uranium that is present in the mixture of various oxidation states. A process of ammonium carbonate-based dissolution has been developed for uranium recovery from the waste generated by an alkaline dissolution process used for the production of the medical isotope Mo-99 [5]. Uranium recovery from residue was achieved with three successive ammonium carbonate–peroxide leaches with fnal decontamination factors from low values of 1–۱۰ Cs-137, Ru-106, and Sb-125 to infnity.