Fun With PUREX

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2023-03-21 23:30:13

Originally wrote this 16 years ago as I was getting my masters degree. As my adviser often asked “Don’t you want to learn normal things?”

While PUREX may save us from being buried in nuclear waste it is not without peril, though it’s more of the did-you-actually-think-this-through-before-you-started-pressing-buttons variety of peril. It is vitally important to take a moment before you start playing with big machinery full of radioactive materials in the middle of simultaneous inorganic & organic chemistry.

For the record, I have personally performed the uranium half of the PUREX process…in a 20mL test tube. It was damn impressive to observe this happening in my hands.

PUREX is an acronym that stands for “Plutonium and Uranium Removal by EXtraction”. First, you bring the uranium up into solution as uranyl nitrate in concentrated nitric acid. “Concentrated Nitric Acid” is one of those chemical phrases that lets you know that you are about to do something dangerous, just like Darkwing Duck.

Next, mix up the tributyl phosphate (TBP) in kerosene. Hearing that words phosphate and kerosene together make me start to think of Oklahoma City. Add the TBP/kerosene mixture to the uranyl nitrate aqueous solution. Now it really sounds like a truck bomb. However, the organic and aqueous phases are immiscible, with the kerosene floating on top.