Hydrothermal processing of actinide contaminated organic wastes

Hydrothermal oxidation is an innovative process for the destruction of organic wastes, that occurs above the critical temperature and pressure of water. The process provides high destruction and removal efficiencies for a wide variety of organic and hazardous substances. For aqueous/organic mixtures, organic materials, and pure organic liquids hydrothermal processing removes most of the organic and nitrate components (>99.999%) and facilitates the collection and separation of the actinides. We have designed, built and tested a hydrothermal processing unit for the removal of the organic and hazardous substances from actinide contaminated liquids and solids. Here we present results for the organic generated at the Los Alamos National Laboratory Plutonium Facility.