Author(s)

Pedro Orrego¹, José Hernández¹, Jorge Manríquez²

¹Sección de Geología y Minería, Departamento de Materiales Nucleares, Comisión Chilena de Energía Nuclear, Santiago, Chile.
²Ingeniería Civil Metalurgia, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Santiago, Chile.

This article shows the modeling of a uranium dioxide production reactor using COMSOL Multiphysics software program in its 4.3b version. The model was made using 3 kinds of studies: momentum, heat and mass transport, in order to determine the influence of the most important operational parameters: UO₃ reaction rate, composition and flow of the reduction gas, the initial temperature reactor and the reducing gas. The operational parameters evaluated were the followings: constant gas flow of2.5 L/min, initial hydrogen concentration of 0.25, 0.50 and0.75 M, and initial temperature of 400°C. The obtained results allow to conclude that under these working conditions, uranium dioxide is obtained virtually instantaneous and, with concentrations close to 0.5 M H₂ in the reducing gas, the process can operate continuously and autogenously, without applying additional energy and temperatures around 600°C.

Uranium Trioxide, Uranium Dioxide, Conversion, Modeling

Orrego, P. , Hernández, J. and Manríquez, J. (2016) Modeling Operational Parameters for Uranium Dioxide Production Reactor through Uranium Trioxide Reaction Using Hydrogen. World Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 6, 131-139. doi: 10.4236/wjnst.2016.63014.