François Virot

Thermochemistry of Ruthenium Oxyhydroxide Species and Their Impact on Volatile Speciations in Severe Nuclear Accident Conditions.

Literature thermodynamic data of ruthenium oxyhydroxides reveal large uncertainties in some of the standard enthalpies of formation, motivating the use of high-level relativistic correlated quantum chemical methods to reduce the level of discrepancies. Reaction energies leading to the formation of all possible oxyhydroxide species RuOx(OH)y(H2O)z have been calculated for a series of reactions combining DFT (TPSSh-5%HF) geometries and partition functions, CCSD(T) energies extrapolated to the complete basis set limits. The highly accurate ab initio thermodynamic data were used as input data of thermodynamic equilibrium computations to derive the speciation of gaseous ruthenium species in the temperature, pressure and concentration conditions of severe nuclear accidents occurring in pressurized water reactors. At temperatures lower than 1000 K, gaseous ruthenium tetraoxide is the dominating species, between 1000 and 2000 K ruthenium trioxide becomes preponderant, whereas at higher temperatures gaseous ruthenium oxide, dioxide and even Ru in gaseous phase are formed. Although earlier studies predicted the formation of oxyhydroxides in significant quantities, the use of highly accurate ab initio thermodynamic data for ruthenium gaseous species leads to a more reliable inventory of gaseous ruthenium species in which gaseous oxyhydroxide ruthenium molecules are formed only in negligible amounts.

Facing the challenge of predicting the standard formation enthalpies of n -butyl-phosphate species with ab initio methods

Tributyl-phosphate (TBP), a ligand used in the PUREX liquid-liquid separation process of spent nuclear fuel, can form an explosive mixture in contact with nitric acid that might lead to a violent explosive thermal runaway. In the context of safety of a nuclear reprocessing plant facility, it is crucial to predict the stability of TBP at elevated temperatures. So far, only the enthalpies of formation of TBP are available in the literature with rather large uncertainties, while those of its degradation products, di-(HDBP) and mono-(H2MBP), are unknown. In this goal, we have used state-of-the art quantum chemical methods to compute the formation enthalpies and entropies of TBP and its degradation products di-(HDBP) and mono-(H2MBP) in gas and liquid phases. Comparisons of levels of quantum chemical theory revealed that there are significant effects of correlation on their electronic structures, pushing for the need of not only high level of electronic correlation treatment, namely, local coupled cluster with single and double excitation operators and perturbative treatment of triple excitations, but also extrapolations to the complete basis to produce reliable and accurate thermodynamics data. Solvation enthalpies were computed with the conductor-like screening model for real solvents [COSMO-RS], for which we observe errors not exceeding 22 kJ mol-1. We thus propose with final uncertainty of about 20 kJ mol-1 standard enthalpies of formation of TBP, HDBP, and H2MBP which amounts to -1281.7 ± 24.4, -1229.4 ± 19.6, and -1176.7 ± 14.8 kJ mol-1, respectively, in the gas phase. In the liquid phase, the predicted values are -1367.3 ± 24.4, -1348.7 ± 19.6, and -1323.8± 14.8 kJ mol-1, to which we may add about -22 kJ mol-1 error from the COSMO-RS solvent model. From these data, the complete hydrolysis of TBP is predicted as an exothermic phenomena but showing a slightly endergonic process.