MMIJ Annual Meeting

Rare metal resources usually are accompanied by naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) such as uranium etc. For the processing of these ores, behavior and treatment of these radioactive materials are important. On the other hand, information on the behavior and treatment of the fuel debris occurred by the Fukushima Dai-ichi NPS accident are essential for the decommission process as well as the radioactive waste management containing nuclear fuel and fission products. The fuel debris seems to be the high temperature reaction product consisted with fuel oxides, cladding materials and structural materials such as steel and concrete. This situation is similar to that of ore suggesting the applicability of materials processing techniques. For example, formation of fuel debris is related to the high temperature metallurgical process between slag and metal and dissolution behavior of radioactive materials into coolant corresponds to the wet process matter. In this paper, radioactive materials in the resources are evaluated by several method first. Then application of processing techniques for these resources are introduced as well as that for fuel debris treatment.