(547f) Uranium Science & Technology Center: Exploring Fundamental Science of Uranium Chemical Processing

In 2020, the US Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration established the Nonproliferation Stewardship Program to ensure the US government maintains the foundational technical capabilities and workforce needed to meet nuclear nonproliferation objectives. The Uranium Science & Technology Center (USTC) is one such initiative and is charged with developing and sustaining DOE’s expertise in uranium chemical processing, both upstream and downstream of enrichment. Despite nearly 80 years of fuel cycle operations, the US’s national proficiency in uranium chemical processing has atrophied over the past several decades, and knowledge gaps remain in specific chemical mechanisms of fuel cycle operations. USTC seeks to grow and sustain workforce knowledge thorough the advanced characterization of uranium processing by developing and operating a state of the art uranium processing and analysis center. A principal research objective of the USTC is to address science gaps that exist in front-end uranium fuel cycle processing, by:

1. Quantify process effects on the physical and chemical properties of uranium products;
2. Characterize processing effects through the parametric studies of unit operations to quantify various flowsheets;
3. Identify chemical species and chemical kinetics of unit operations

The focus of this talk will be on establishing the laboratory-scale unit operations to support workforce development and the methods currently being developed to capture ex situ and in situ chemical characterization of processing effects to better understand the fundamental chemistry of uranium processes. These empirical measurements will be validated against physics-based predictive models to quantify reaction kinetics and other process parameters.