Commissariat a L'energie Atomique

Roger Bonniaud

Antoine Jouan

Yves Hery

Jean-Pierre Moncouyoux

Michel Saint-Gaudens

Claude Sombret

The invention permits the automatic removal of a liquid sample without human intervention. The sample is removed during the pouring of liquid glass into its container. Use is made of a bucket fitted at the end of an oscillating arm. The mechanism is controlled by a fusible or meltable pellet, which melts when the glass level rises in the container. A prestressed spring and a counterweight enables the arm to pass from an initial position into a sampling position and then to a folded back position. The invention also provides an apparatus for raising the bucket and an apparatus for recovering the solidified sample in said bucket. The invention is used for taking a radioactive glass sample having to be permanently stored in a container.

Process and apparatus for the automatic removal of a material sample

Process for the conditioning of waste constituted by radioactive metal particles insoluble in nitric acid solutions, wherein said particles are suspended in a liquid, the suspension undergoes an evaporation heat treatment by injecting the suspension onto a hot bed of a powder of a metal or an alloy chosen from the group including copper, nickel, zinc, copper alloys, nickel alloys, zinc alloys and stainless steel, and the dry mixture of powder and metal particles obtained after this heat treatment undergoes a melting process at a temperature adequate for melting the metal or alloy powder and for forming clearly defined compounds between the metal of the powder and at least part of the metal constituents of the radioactive particles.

Process for conditioning radioactive waste

A calcinating device, or calcinator, is provided with a rotatable drum, the axis of which is slightly inclined with respect to the horizontal, and is adapted to be mounted inside a furnace and to be used for mixing and heating a mixture of sintered glass pieces and of radioactive wastes. The calcinator has, at the extremities thereof, two flanges to which are respectively fixed an upper sleeve on a level with which open an inlet conduit for the radioactive liquids, a conduit connected to a hopper for feeding sintered glass and a gas exhaust conduit, and a lower sleeve, the extension of which away from said drum is provided with an opening for expelling the calcinate obtained and transferring it to a smelting furnace. The calcinator is further provided with means for rotating and sealing same.

Growing community of inventors

Goudargues, France

Roger Bonniaud