Seminar: Electrochemical Processes for Treating Used Nuclear Fuels

The Idaho National Laboratory is actively engaged in research on the nuclear fuel cycle. One area of research focuses on the application of molten salt  electrochemistry (a.k.a., pyroprocessing) to the treatment of used nuclear oxide fuels and metallic fuels for the purpose of keeping the fissile materials in the fuel cycle. This presentation will describe the major unit operations involved in pyroprocessing flowsheets and some of the basic theory behind the electrochemcial conversions and separations.

About the Speaker

Dr. Fredrickson performed his undergraduate and graduate studies in the
Metallurgical and Materials Engineering Department at the Colorado School of Mines from 1986 to 1996. He worked at the Reynolds Metals Company supporting improvements to the Hall-Heroult cell technology (the molten salt technology used to make aluminum metal) from 1996 to 2000. And he worked at Hazen Research Inc. from 2000 to 2007 supporting process development for the mining and chemical industries. He has been in the Pyroprocessing Department at the INL since 2007 engaged in research on uranium  electrorefining and transuranic recovery from molten salts. He is presently the manager of the Pyroprocessing Department with a staff of 12 researchers working on many aspects of pyroprocessing such as safeguards, process chemistry, equipment design, and waste form development.

Hosted by Professor Raymond Cao & Professor Vaibhav Sinha