Current Progress in R&D of Fluoride Volatility Method

Fluoride Volatility Method is regarded to be a promising advanced pyrochemical reprocessing technology, which can be used for reprocessing mainly of oxide spent fuels coming from current LWRs or future GEN IV fast reactors. The technology should be chiefly suitable for the reprocessing of advanced oxide fuels with inert matrixes of very high burn-up and short cooling time, which can be hardly reprocessed by hydrometallurgical technologies. Fluoride Volatility Method is based on direct fluorination of powdered spent fuel with fluorine gas in a flame fluorination reactor, where the volatile fluorides (mostly UF6) are separated from the non-volatile ones (trivalent minor actinides and majority of fission products). The subsequent operations necessary for partitioning of volatile fluorides are condensation and evaporation of volatile fluorides, thermal decomposition of PuF6 and finally distillation and sorption used for the purification of uranium product.