Fuel conditioning facility electrorefiner process model

The Fuel Conditioning Facility at the Idaho National Laboratory processes spent nuclear fuel from the Experimental Breeder Reactor II using electro-metallurgical treatment. To process fuel without waiting for periodic sample analyses to assess process conditions, an electrorefiner process model predicts the composition of the electrorefiner inventory and effluent streams. For the chemical equilibrium portion of the model, the two common methods for solving chemical equilibrium problems, stoichiometric and non-stoichiometric , were investigated. In conclusion, the stoichiometric method produced equilibrium compositions close to the measured results whereas the non-stoichiometric method did not.