Partículas núcleo@cáscara y @cáscara Basadas en una Cáscara de ZrO2 Aplicadas a la Extracción de Radioelementos

LEBED, PABLO; MAISULS, I.; ARNAL P.M; LARRIVIERE, D

Jornada; XII Jornadas Argentinas de Tratamiento de Minerales; 2014

The aqueous reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel through partition is the most explored strategy by the numerous countries with nuclear power generation capability. This strategy could allow a long term radiotoxicity reduction in nuclear repositories where minority actinides and nuclear fission products of long half-life would be separated as complement of the separation of uranium and plutonium. Efforts have been made to increment the adsorption of radioelements over conventional adsorbents such as silica gel, activated alumina and carbon and clays. Zirconium oxide is an interesting metallic oxide used in catalysis and chromatography with unique surface properties and excellent thermal, mechanical and chemical stability. Core@shell particles are composite materials with a wide range of technological and scientific applications. In this contribution we explore the potential of core@shell and @shell particles based on a ZrO2 shell applied to the removal of radioelements from aqueous solutions. We evaluate adsorption isotherms and its kinetic behaviour of SiO2@ZrO2c, SiO2@ZrO2nc, @ZrO2nc and @ZrO2c over Pa-231, Np-237, U-238, Am-241 and Pu-242 at high HNO3 acidity. We also evaluate the removal of actinides at low HNO3 acidity. Finally, we report how the removal of U-238 is affected by aged materials in several conditions of time and HNO3 acidity.