Polonium decontamination performance of stainless steel mesh filter for lead alloy-cooled reactors

Lead–Bismuth eutectic (LBE) has many good characteristics as a coolant for fast reactors. One of the issues remaining to be solved, however, is the polonium issue. The purpose of the present study was to estimate the decontamination performance of a polonium filter by experiment in the penetration condition. Two types of stainless steel wire meshes, fine wire mesh and loose wire mesh, were tested in the experiments. The results show that polonium filters made of stainless steel wire mesh can be very useful device for the removal of polonium in the gas phase. These filters can be used for the decontamination of primary loops by the baking method.