Korean Pyrochemical Process R&D activities

Korea is operating 20 nuclear units, producing about 700 t/yr of spent fuel. This spent fuel should be managed in a safe and practicable way. One option for this spent fuel management is treatment with pyrochemical process. Pyrochemical processflow sheetin KAERI includes voloxidation, electroreduction, electrorefining, electrowinning, and waste salt treatment processes. Each unit process has been tested in lab-scale, and these unit processes will be incorporated in PRIDE (PyRoprocess Inactive integrated DEmonstration) Facility in late 2011 in order to evaluate scaled-up design on the basis of the information of lab-scale experiments, integrity of each unit performance, and safeguards of integrated process, etc.