Output details

The hydrolysis of hydroxamic acid complexants in the presence of non-oxidizing metal ions 2: Neptunium (IV) ions.

The work contributes to the understanding of Neptunium routing in new nuclear weapons proliferation-resistant nuclear fuel recycle processes (Advanced PUREX) under development in the UK and US. It presents the first quantitative description of Np-hydroxamate thermodynamics and kinetics under conditions representative of reprocessing. Speciation diagrams are built and used to describe the initial state of the hydrolysis experiments; the kinetics of the system are deconvoluted to yield concentration-time dependencies for all reactants. It was funded by the National Nuclear Laboratory (robin.j.taylor@nnl.co.uk) and led to further work on Np routing in an NNL-sponsored EngD (dave.a.woodhead@nnl.co.uk) and the EPSRC-funded MBASE project (EP/I002928/1).