Study on the Vibrational Scraping of Uranium Product from a Solid Cathode of Electrorefiner

A high-throughput electrorefiner has been developed for commercialization use by enhancing the uranium recovery from the reduced metal which is produced from the oxide reduction process. It is necessary to scrap and effectively collect uranium dendrites from the surface of the solid cathode for high yield. When a steel electrode is used as the cathode in the electrorefining process, uranium is deposited and regularly stuck to the steel cathode during electrorefining. The sticking coefficient of a steel cathode is very high. In order to decrease the sticking coefficient of the steel cathode effectively, vibration mode was applied to the electrode in this study. Uranium dendrites were scraped and fell apart from the steel cathode by a vibration force. The vibrational scraping of the steel cathode was compared to the self-scraping of the graphite cathode. Effects of the applied current density and the vibration stroke on the scraping of the uranium dendrites were also investigated.