The Influence of Near Field Redox Conditions on Spent Fuel Leaching
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The Influence of Near Field Redox Conditions on Spent Fuel Leaching Kastriot Spahiu1,*, Ulla-Britt Eklund2, Daqing Cui2 and Max Lundström2 1 SKB, P.O. Box 5864, SE-102 40 Stockholm, Sweden, [email protected] 2 Hot Cell Laboratories, Studsvik Nuclear AB, SE-611 82 Nyköping, Sweden ABSTRACT In a repository, the spent fuel could come in contact with groundwater if the canister or container has breached. The system may be quite complex with oxygen-free water, uranium dioxide, a corroding metal, such as iron, and a radiation field present at the same time. In an anaerobic environment iron and mild steel will corrode and hydrogen will be evolved. The equilibrium hydrogen pressure for this reaction is very high. At some time after water intrusion, there will be large amounts of dissolved hydrogen in the near field, corresponding to a partial pressure at least equivalent to the hydrostatic pressure at the repository depth. For this reason, we investigated the leaching behavior of 0.25-0.5 mm sized fragments of PWR spent fuel (43 MWd / Kg U) in simulated groundwater solution (10 mM NaCl and 2 mM HCO3-) under 5 MPa hydrogen and argon pressure. In a leaching experiment under 5 MPa hydrogen at 25 °C, the total U concentration was found to be
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