| Abstract Scope |
In electrorefining process of used nuclear fuel in molten salts, fission products such as alkaline-earth and rare-earth elements accumulate in the process salt (e.g., LiCl-KCl) since they are electrochemically more active than uranium. In order to recover these fission products from the process salt, liquid metals (e.g., Bi, Sb, and Sn) were investigated as separating media through electrodeposition. The feasibility of this approach was rationalized by determining thermodynamic properties of binary alloys (e.g., Sr-Bi and Nd-Bi) through electromotive force (emf) measurements. While emf measurement is a straightforward practice by measuring the cell potential between two electrodes in equilibrium, the high reactivity of these electrodes resulted in technical challenges in stable emf measurements (e.g., early failure of electrochemical cells). In this presentation, several key aspects for successful emf measurements of reactive alloys are presented, including the selection of electrolyte system (chlorides vs. fluorides) and the use of less-reactive reference electrodes. |