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2860223 
Technical Report 
Demonstration of the Urex Solvent Extraction Process with Dresden Reactor Fuel Solution 
Thompson, MC; Norato, MA; Kessinger, GF; Pierce, RA; Rudisill, TS 
2002 
NTIS/02922813 
GRA and I 
GRA and I 
A solvent extraction process to recover uranium and technetium from solutions of irradiated commercial reactor fuel while sending the plutonium to waste with the fission products and higher actinides was tested with actual fuel solution. Demonstration of the uranium extraction (UREX) process at baseline conditions showed that the process meets all goals for recovery and decontamination. The goals for the UREX process are to produce a U product that is Class C low level waste or lower, recover and amp;gt; 99.9 % of the U and and amp;gt;95 % of the Tc, reject and amp;gt;99.9 % of the Pu to the raffinate, and maintain the U concentration in the Tc product and amp;lt;0.01 % of the Tc. All three tests showed Cs being lower than the Class A limit of 1 Ci per cubic meter. Strontium was low Class B for the first two tests and very close Class A in the third test (the Sr was below the detectability limit of the method in the third test). In fact, the third test resulted in a TRU isotope concentration of only 16 nCi per gram of U. The U losses to the Tc and raffinate streams totaled 0.011 % of the U fed to the process in the first test. U loss to the raffinate was 0.016 % in the second test.