PHYSICOCHEMICAL INTERACTIONS IN THE VOLATILIZATION OF CHLORIDES, APPLIED TO THE SPENT FUEL CONDITIONING

摘要

The conditioning of spent nuclear fuels from test and research reactors requires a previous physicochemical treatment to stabilize them chemically. The halogenation aim is to transform the constituents of the 6061 aluminum alloy into volatile halides. In this work we present preliminary results of the chlorination of two aluminum alloys: AA 6061 and a type of CuZnAl alloy.The study reveals that the chlorination leads to a complete volatilization of the aluminum chloride at temperatures higher than 200°C, removing small quantities of some constituents of the alloy. This could be due to the formation of complex molecules in gaseous phase with interactions of the Van der Waals' type. Therefore, it is necessary to study the most significant interactions among the aluminum, magnesium and copper chlorides, with the purpose of finding out their intrinsic nature.