Poster Presenter

On a new way of large-scale Mo-99 production in molten salt fluoride fuel
Dmitry Yurievich Chuvilin, D.Yu.Chuvilin and V.A.Zagryadskiy
Russia

The problems of Mo-99 world production are considered. Is marked, that the current state of large-scale Mo-99 production is close to critical, due to exhaustion of a work resource of the majority research reactors and the potentials of nuclear technologies used for this purpose.

The crisis of Mo-99 production gives exclusive chance for realization of new approaches to its reception, capable providing scale law-waste production based on the use of low-enriched uranium LEU.

One of the possible alternatives is the technology of Mo-99 production, using effect of a spontaneous exit of Mo-99 from molten salt fluoride fuel in a gas phase which was first observed during operation of reactor MSRE (ORNL). Up to 50 % of Mo-99 in the form of volatile fluorides appeared in gas covering free surfaces of salt. The main amount of fission products remained in fuel.

The proposed concept of the Mo-99 molten salt production technology can be developed as for creation of special-ized MSR, as for creation of reactor loop installations with LEU MS fuel in existing research reactors.