Off-Gas Handling for Radioactive Metal Melting Facilities

Abstract

Nuclear power is important to a low carbon future where the need for technologies to remove, consolidate, and reduce nuclear waste will only increase throughout the entire nuclear material lifecycle. Radioactive metal melting holds significant promise and opportunity for achieving these goals. The selection of an off-gas technology is critical to the success of a metal melting process, as it serves to capture the airborne radioactive contamination generated. In this paper, the authors summarize the results of a comprehensive review of various off-gas technologies that could be employed. These technologies were assessed against a selected set of criteria including technology effectiveness, maintenance burden, ease of use/automation, and high- level implementation costs. The purpose of the study is to outline a framework that can be used to select suitable off-gas technologies to capture radiological contamination depending on the characteristics of the radioactive waste being processed and the specific radioisotopes released during melting.