Evaluation of Uranium Recovery Potential from Solvent Waste through Liquid-Liquid Extraction Attempted recovery
By Yejin Park, Bruce Hanson, Alastair Baker
Published in Nuclear Future 21.1
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SUMMARY
- Uranium in the form of uranyl nitrate in tributyl phosphate arising from the UK Advanced Fuel Cyle Programme has been stored since 2019 due to its potential fiscal value in recovery and circular use
- Conducted back-extraction of solvent waste containing uranium with an unknown composition that has been stored in the Nuclear Engineering Laboratory at the University of Leeds
AUTHORS
Yejin Park is a MEng and BEng graduate in Chemical and Nuclear Engineering from the University of Leeds. She has conducted liquid-liquid extraction on uranium-containing solvent residue in the Nuclear Engineering Lab at the university. As a Research Assistant at Ridgeway Information, she researched nuclear non-proliferation and the development of 4thgenerationreactors in the Republic of Korea. Currently, she is an intern at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in the Department of Nuclear Safety and Security, Division of Nuclear Installation Safety.
Professor Bruce Hanson holds a Leadership Chair in Nuclear Process Engineering at the University of Leeds. He is a named investigator on 10 grants, leading EPSRC’s ATLANTIC programme and serving as Co-Director of the GREEN CDT. Before his appointment at Leeds, he spent 25+ years in the nuclear and chemical industries in a range of roles, specialising in actinide separations and treatment of irradiated nuclear fuel. Most recently, he was the Technical Authority for Spent Fuel and Nuclear Materials at the National Nuclear Laboratory, where he was a Visiting Senior Fellow.
Dr Alastair Baker is the Experimental Officer operating the Multiphase Fluid Flow In Nuclear Systems (MULTIForm) Experimental Facility, part of the UK’s National Nuclear Users Facility (NNUF), as well as lab captain for the Nuclear Engineering Lab at the University of Leeds. He was awarded the UoLeeds Mentor of the Year 2021 and won the Pinkerton Prize for Nuclear Research in 2023.