ELECTROCHEMICAL DISSOLUTION OF NICKEL-42 IN ACID ELECTROLYTES

This paper investigates the conditions for effective etching of nickel-42 in acid electrolytes such as HNO3, H2SO4 and HCl. We have found that HCl is the most suitable electrolyte and the reaction orders of H+ and Cl- are 1 and 0.5 respectively when 1.0 N less-than-or-equal-to [H+] less-than-or-equal-to 2.0 N and [Cl-] less-than-or-equal-to 0.1 N. The anodic Tafel slope is approximately 120 mV decade-1. Finally, a reaction mechanism was proposed to describe the etching process of nickel-42 in HCl electrolyte.