Ion Exchange

DOE-HDBK-3010-94

7.0 Application Examples; Liquid Storage and Ion Exchange Examples

previously recommended, or whether the relief valves would be expected to lift. If they did

lift, it is important to know that they would be able to control pressure buildup. Until the

answers to these questions are known, it is a meaningless activity to manipulate the source

term.

A number of other implications arise from the source term estimate as well. If the only fires

that are postulated are large fires from undefined causes, the tank farm fire may bound all

other such fires. For the largest credible fire (i.e., based on actual or expected combustible

loading) in the tank farm area, it is important to know whether the ventilation filtration

system would still be expected to function. If it would not, the importance of combustible

loading control and fire suppression becomes even greater. Other issues can be imagined as

well. If the walls of the tank farm had been constructed out of Benelex, the importance of

controls to limit the flammability of that material and to make the fire suppression system

available would increase. If an unavoidably large accumulation of flammable material must

be present outside the tank farm enclosures, a legitimate consideration may be to install, for

new design, or backfit, for existing facilities, fire-rated walls instead of bare stainless steel

walls around the tanks. In any case, the importance of the source term and consequence

estimation process is not that it provides definitive results, but that it serves as an identifier

that triggers other actions having direct, tangible effects on facility safety.

7.3.6 Ion Exchange

Release topics explored in this example are listed in Table 7-9.

Table 7-9. Ion Exchange Example Topics

Liquid

Metal

Powder

Surface

Criticality

Contamination

- Thermal stress

- N/A

- Thermal stress of

- None

- Venting

contaminated

superheated liquid

polystyrene

7.3.6.1

Hazard Summary

This activity involves liquid plutonium solutions and plutonium absorbed on solid resins.

Plutonium-bearing solutions from the dissolving lines are transferred by a small gear pump to

three ion exchange columns in series. Plutonium in the ~ 35% nitric acid feed is absorbed

onto the resin in the loading cycle, and eluted as a purified plutonium nitrate solution by a

4% nitric acid elution flow. Effluent solution from the resin loading cycle as well as resin

wash and reconditioning cycle effluent (also 35% nitric acid) are directed to annular waste

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