Use of drum film devices in radioactive waste conditioning technology

by
V.A. Uzikov
.
I.V.Uzikova

.
Read the whole article
Download the ZIP file
.
Introduction
So far, the common practice of radioactive waste treatment in Russia was controlled temporary storage – the so-called “procrastinated decision”. In Russia, the total amount of accumulated liquid radioactive waste (hereinafter LRW) is 477 million, and 77 millions of solid radioactive waste. However, as the world and Russian practice shows, that the controlled storage of radioactive waste in the long term results their accumulation and is not acceptable as a strategy of RAW treatment. Such strategy does not lead to the final safe solution of the problem, but requires the permanent overhead costs without clear prospect [1].

Thus, high production complexes for LRW treatment are needed. Key consumers interested in of liquid radioactive waste treatment plants are:

• enterprises of spent fuel treatment;
• existing nuclear power plants with power and research reactors;
• enterprises involved to decommissioning of boats and ships with nuclear power plants;
• enterprises involved to decommissioning of nuclear power plants and research reactor
installations;
• enterprises involved in the liquidation of the consequences of nuclear accidents
(Chernobyl, Fukushima , etc.).

Nowadays, mainly thermal and sorption methods are used for treatment of liquid radioactive waste. Using these methods, the main part of liquid radioactive waste, produced during the operation of nuclear installations of various purposes and other facilities using radioactive substances, is treated. These methods cannot be called original or specific for the treatment of radioactive waste (hereinafter RAW), because they were taken from various conventional industries and modified. Mainly these are methods, usually used in purification, treatment and desalination of water.
For implementing of treatment methods of non-nuclear industry and their modification, the specific requirements of industries related to radiation must be taken into account [2]:

• leak tightness of the equipment, excluding the possibility of radioactive contamination of buildings, staff and the environment;
• feasibility of the equipment operation to minimize the need for maintenance services in the radiation conditions, which require complicated and expensive works of equipment decontamination.

The most universal method for treatment of almost all types of LRW is a thermal method, in which LRW solution is evaporated to concentrate radioactive products in a small volume.
Practice of LRW treatment shows that the main source of problems in evaporation equipment are the heat exchange pipes. During the operation, their surface is covering inevitably by sediments, which have to be removed periodically by chemical washing, with interruption of the treatment process and at the same time with producing a large amount of secondary LRW. This inevitability is caused by evaporator’s design including heat exchange tubes – the process of sedimentation of the tubes cannot be prevented, it can only be decreased by using different methods: increasing the circulation velocity in heat exchange tubes or addition of special chemicals additives. The inevitability of foam-and-droplets entrainment from the evaporator is also caused by its design, so the additional special equipment have to be used for steam and condensate purification from radionuclides. Moreover, it is necessary to perform periodically the mechanical cleaning of heat exchange tubes which leads to important radiation doses to personnel.
All these problems existing in LRW evaporation technology are well known and studied, and some alternative methods are considered in [2], but it is concluded that these methods have a low productivity and heat transfer because of the lack of an organized circulation of evaporated solution [2].
The ideal comprehensive solution of the problem of LRW treatment is to create a continuous LRW evaporation technology with cementation of the concentrate at the same time, and the possible addition of used sorbents and sludge to the resulting cement compound. The main factor limiting the use of evaporation technology is a high energy costs, but with the appearance at energy market such installations as E-Cat, this problem disappears.
For comprehensive solution of the problems of LRW concentration and its subsequent cementation it is proposed to establish a technological process based on the two following principles:

1. To perform the process of LRW concentration in the evaporator equipment, that helps to prevent droplet entrainment and excludes degradation of technological parameters in time (to exclude interruptions in work of evaporation equipment due to fouling of the heating surface).
2. To make the processes of evaporation (secondary evaporation) and conditioning of LRW (inclusion in cement matrix) sequental and continuous, thereby eliminating the need for a large number of intermediate containers and dosing of separate portions.
.
Read the whole article
Download the ZIP file
.

239 comments to Use of drum film devices in radioactive waste conditioning technology

  • Marco

    Dear Dr. Irina Uzikova

    I have heard of the “Rubbiatron”, an under critic Thorium reactor, more of an energy amplifier, that requires a proton accelerator, that can also be used to recycle some type of nuclear waste.
    I have heard also that India is interested, due to their high thorium reserves.
    Why you said that it takes 100 years to develope the technology? Is it another type of technology, or you meant the “Rubbiatron” of Carlo Rubbia?

    Best Regards,
    Marco.

  • Andrea Rossi

    Irina and Vitaly Uzikov:
    Thank you for your answer to Ken.
    I totally agree with your analysis.
    Warm Regards,
    A.R.

  • Irina Uzikova

    Dear Ken,
    Thank you very much for your words,
    In our opinion, the thorium fuel cycle requires time, work and budget immense to be elaborated, and taking into account that Ecat technology will be developed, there won’t be a need in Thorium cycle in 100 years.

    Last years the development of nuclear reactors was slowed down because of several reasons : increase of cost of nuclear plant building because of increase of the requirements to its safety after accidents, unresolved problems of the closed fuel cycle, big amounts of nuclear waste, still non-zero risks of the major accident, negative attitude of the population to the nuclear industry.
    Moreover, the amount of consumed nuclear fuel is larger than the amount of mined one (nowadays this lack is covered by accumulated stocks of nuclear weapons). Soon the lack of mined U235 can be a big problem. This problem could be resolved by closed fuel cycle (producing of Plutonium or Thorium in reactors). But for this all the chain of such technology should be elaborated (a lot of reactors on fast neutrons should be constructed, the technology of recycling of the new type of fuel should be elaborated).Thorium is better than Plutonium because it cannot be used by terrorist to make a bomb, because there are much more of thorium than uranium on the earth and there will be much less of nuclear waste (if closed nuclear fuel cycle is elaborated). However for now there is no elaborated technology to mine it and to make a fuel. There are projects of the reactors on Thorium cycle (French Molten-Salt Fast Reactor, which conception is elaborated in the LPSC laboratory). But this reactor is planned to be built not earlier than in 100 years, there are a lot of problems to be solved.

    Best regards,
    Irina and Vitaly Uzikov

  • D.T.

    Dear Dr Irina Uzikova, Dr Vitaly Uzikov:
    Did you make a prototype of your model to treat the radioactive wastes in Russia ?
    D.T.

  • Garland

    Dr Uzikov, Dr Uzikova:
    Do you think that the nuclear powwer plants have a future in any part of the world ?
    Thank you for your paper,
    Garland

  • Ken

    Dr Irina and Vitaly Uzikov:
    What do you think of the small nuclear power units fueled by thorium that had been proposed not much ago from Bill Gates as a possible solution to have a safer nuclear power technology ?
    Congrats for your paper, I think the solution proposed to treat radioactive wastes is worth a thoroughly experimentation.
    Regards,
    Ken

  • Joe

    Dear Dr Irina Uzikova:
    Thank you for your precise answer.
    Cheers,
    Joe

  • Andrea Rossi

    Chris Johnson:
    Thank you for the info. Very interesting indeed.
    Warm Regards
    A.R.

  • Chris Johnson

    Mr. Rossi,

    I read an article about a Swedish group who have created a heat charged capacitor that might be of interest. It is said to be made from low cost materials and can be made at industiral scale. From the article:

    “We still don’t know exactly why we’re getting this effect. But the fact is that we can convert and store 2,500 times more energy than the best of today’s supercondensers linked to thermoelectric generators,” Professor Crispin says.

    The article is at: http://phys.org/news/2016-03-supercondenser-sun.html

    Best Regards,
    Chris Johnson

  • Andrea Rossi

    Jones:
    The comment on Vortex is intelligent.
    Warm Regards,
    A.R.

  • Andrea Rossi

    Irina Uzikova:
    Thank you for your exhaustive answer.
    I totally agree with what you write. Besides, I do not think that the permissions path will be eased by the small dimension; on the contrary, the opinion will prevail that such plants will spread the risks instead of limiting them.
    Warm Regards,
    A.R.
    P.S.
    Thank you for your concern!

  • Irina Uzikova

    Dear Andrea and Mr Joe,
    In our opinion, these mini-reactors is a controversial idea. Probably the only advantage is an acceleration of the construction time, but only when there will be enough experience and serial manufacturing .Yes, the refueling will be more rare (approximately once in 5 years) , but in the same time all the core, and not only fuel assemblies should be changed. Most likely, the quantity of the radioactive waste per kilowatt will also increase. The estimated cost per kilowatt should increase. Also, taking into account the decrease of the reactor core dimensions, fuel burnout will be less (so using of the nuclear fuel is less efficient). And the reserves of uranium 235 in the world are decreasing fast, so the cost of the nuclear fuel will increase constantly. So, the world experts’ opinion is that the nuclear technology should develop as fast as possible the technology of reactors of Fourth Generation (reactors on fast neutrons with close uranium-plutonium cycle). Unfortunately the technology of the closed fuel cycle and treatment of nuclear fuel is not developed and amount of nuclear radioactive waste is still enormous.
    Such water mini-reactors don’t correspond to the conception of Fourth Generation Reactors.
    On the other hand, mini-reactors could be a good solution for sparsely populated areas, where the big power plants would be disadvantageous economically, anyway such mini-reactors couldn’t make concurrence for E-Cat installations by economic, ecologic and safety indicators.
    Thus, in our opinion, mini-reactors cannot solve problems of nuclear sector.
    P.S Dear Andrea, hope You feel a little bit better we are very happy for you that medical results were good! Please take care of You!

  • Jones

    DR Rossi – interesting comment on Vortex-L by a ashfield could you comment on this:

    There must be an important clue in the new E-Cat X being so small – 100 Watts. This would make a conventional control system for a large plant seem excessive. I wonder is the new design is sufficiently stable that, after start up, it can be controlled by varying the amount of electricity extracted.

  • Andrea Rossi

    Dr Uzikov:
    I was going to put you the same question of Joe, also because you have a strong experience in nuclear power plants.
    Warm Regards,
    A.R.

  • Joe

    Dr Uzikova, Dr Uzikov:
    thank you for your interesting paper and good luck for the application of your technology.
    What do you think, as a nuclear reactors experts, of the proposal of Rolls Royce to substitute the existing nuclear reactors with so called “mini reactors” with a power of 200 MW ?
    Regards,
    Joe

  • Maurice Brook

    Dr Vitaly Uzikov, Dr Irina Uzikova:
    Thank you for this very interesting paper. I wish you good luck with this technology
    Maurice

  • Andrea Rossi

    Dawn:
    Thank you for the interesting information.
    Warm Regards,
    A.R.

  • Dawn

    Dear Dr Rossi:
    Maybe this can interest the Readers of the JoNP:
    The AMES Research Center , Moffett Fields, California ( NASA ) has published on Tech Brief of March 2016 ( pp 72-73 ) an important invention of Jonathan D. Trent, related to an algae photobioreactor that uses floating enclosures with semi premeable membranes, able to produce fuels from algae at competitive costs.
    Who is interested to know more can contact the Ames Technology Partnerships Office here: arc-techtransfer@mail.nasa.gov referring to 16280-1.
    Cheers,
    Dawn

  • Fred

    Dear Dr Uzikov:
    Could yoyr technology be useful to treat the radioactive wastes of Fukushima ?
    Thank you,
    Fred

  • Andrea Rossi

    Alfred Philippe:
    Thank you,
    Warm Regards,
    A.R.

  • Alfred Philippe

    Dr Andrea Rossi:
    Congratulations for your theoretical breakthrough, this time born from experimental activity. We are very curious to see where your hyper.activism has brought you !
    Alfred

  • Andrea Rossi

    Giannino Ludovico Ferro Casagrande:
    Of course ! F9, F9, F9 !
    Warm Regards,
    A.R.

  • Andrea Rossi

    Toussaint:
    No, it will be 250 kW.
    Warm Regards,
    A.R.

  • toussaint

    Dear Andrea Rossi,

    The industrial E-CAT X your are planning to buid, will it have the same power as the

    older E-CAT industrial plant ?

    Warm regards,

    Toussaint françois

  • Giannino Lodovico Ferro Casagrande

    Ron è stato troppo modesto nei tuoi confronti !!! Come diceva il nostro meraviglioso Sergio : ” TUTTO CIO’ FUNZIONA ” Ma la lacuna più grossa l’hai esperita Tù !!!
    Ti sei dimenticato nella risposta al Ron di citare : ” f9 ” !!!
    Hello Andrea ,,,,,,,,,Giannino di Udin Ti aspetta sempre !!!

  • Andrea Rossi

    Rod Stringer:
    Thank you for your insight.
    The questions you are putting are confidential, so far, but I am sure due agreements will be made on the matter.
    Warm Regards
    A.R.

  • Ron Stringer

    Dr. Rossi,
    You are making amazing progress! I look forward to the day when scientists and engineers around the world can make contributions, when thousands of bright minds focus on extending your work! One genius is capable of incredible advances, one thousand will rebuild the world.
    Obviously you are llimited in what you can tell us about your inventions for the moment. Perhaps you would feel freer to discuss your manufacturing plans? You have been in discussions with ABB regarding robotic assembly lines. How many robots do you think you will have working, beside how many people? How many assembly steps?
    Your readers have been useful to you in various ways, you have said before. Perhaps some helpful ideas will arise in other areas as well!
    Ron Stringer

  • Andrea Rossi

    Toussaint:
    Thank you for your kind words.
    The E-Cat X is going well and we are preparing a big thing with it. We are already designing a new industrial plant made by E-Cat X, to be installed in a factory to test it directly in the battlefield. During these last days we made enormous progress with it. F9.
    Warm Regards,
    A.R.

  • toussaint

    Dear Andrea Rossi,

    How is your E-CAT X doing this week on this important test you are doing ?

    I want to thank you for your splendid work, and your dedicated kindness to this forum.

    So much have been done since the day when you discovered the “ROSSI EFFECT” with a burned

    finger !!!

    Kind regards,

    Toussain françois

  • Andrea Rossi

    Lars:
    No, the modules will be smaller.
    Warm Regards,
    A.R.

  • Lars

    Will all the modules be of 20kW?

  • Andrea Rossi

    Toussaint:
    Thank you for the link,
    Warm Regards,
    A.R.

  • toussaint

    Dear Andrea Rossi,

    Maybe this video can interest you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkWiBxWieQU

    Warm regards.

    Toussaint françois

  • Andrea Rossi

    Toussaint:
    In this moment I am not able to answer.
    Warm Regards,
    A.R.

  • toussaint

    Dear Andrea Rossi,

    Your last public presentation was in 2012 4 years ago I think,

    Do you forsee a presentation in 2016?

    Warm regards,

    Toussaint françois

  • Andrea Rossi

    Hank Mills:
    Thank you for your suggestions. F9.
    Warm Regards,
    A.R.

  • Hank Mills

    Dear Andrea,

    I think a great application for the E-Cat X is the electric bicycle. Instead of a 20 pound, or heavier, pack of batteries providing a 20 mile range, the smaller and lighter E-Cat X could take someone across the country and back on grams of fuel.. Probably, the certification process would be easier too – most bicycles don’t have to be registered for use on the road and most users don’t buy insurance. I think you could sell millions of units before you could get an E-Cat X powered car designed, certified, safety tested, etc. The homeless could even tap into the power to get electricity when they are camping. 500 watts could power a small heater, light, cell phone, etc.

  • Andrea Rossi

    Toussaint:
    Nor yet, we still have to decide the standard configuration. F9.
    Warm Regards,
    A.R.

  • toussaint

    Dear Andrea Rossi.

    Congratulations of the recent progress made by your E-CAT X.

    Are you able to tell the maximum output in watts?

    Warm regards.

    Toussaint françois

  • Andrea Rossi

    Pierre Carbonnelle:
    The US Patent that has been granted to us gives enough protection to our IP.
    Besides, as I already said, I have more than 200 patents pending and in preparation; the pending ones grant anyway a priority date. Among them I am confident that about 140 will be allowed and about 60 will be possibly rejected.
    Warm Regards
    A.R.

  • Pierre Carbonnelle

    Dear Mr. Rossi,

    Patents are very important in your project, and it is good news that you have already been granted one. You said earlier that you still have many other pending patent applications : do you expect their approval soon (i.e. in a couple of months) ? If not, can you start selling the ECat without those pending patents ?

    Thanks in advance,
    PC

  • Andrea Rossi

    Fusionrudy:
    All this information will be available after the end of the preliminar tests.
    Warm Regards,
    A.R.

  • fusionrudy

    With respect to the ECT-X electricity output could you tell us in what form the electricity is available:
    1. is it AC or DC?
    2. Is voltage fixed or variable? in what range?
    3. Is current fixed or variable? In what range?
    4. Is power variation variable due to voltage or amperage or both?
    5. Does it need conditioning (e.g. buffering, filtering etc.)?
    Many thanks in advance !

  • Andrea Rossi

    Pierre Carbonelle:
    The plant has been visited only from authorized persons, which are very few and confidential.
    Warm Regards,
    A.R.

  • Pierre Carbonnelle

    Dear Mr Rossi,

    Could you tell us how many visitors (people and/or entities) came to see the 1M ECat so far ? From how many countries ? (I suppose they all had non-disclosure agreement)

    Thanks in advance,
    Pierre C.

  • Andrea Rossi

    Fedir Mykhaylov:
    No, we do not use directly or indirectly radioactive materials.
    Warm Regards,
    A.R.

  • fedir mykhaylov

    Mr. Rossi. Maybe to confirm or deny anti- Mossbauer effect hypothesis Rossi / Cook to use an external source of exposure to gamma radiation at the operating / shutdown reactor e-catX

  • Ernesto Muscatello

    Dear Dr Irina and Vitaly Uzikov:
    Very interesting article, I hope your technology will have success.
    Ernesto

  • Andrea Rossi

    Toussaint: I hope to make a presentation of the E-Cat X in 2016.
    Warm Regards,
    A.R.

  • Andrea Rossi

    Swedo:
    Two are maintained in normal operation to check the endurance.
    Warm Regards,
    A.R.

Leave a Reply

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>