A Recovery Process of Strontium from Acidic Nuclear Waste Streams

A process combining liquid-liquid extraction with ion exchange for strontium traces removal in the presence of an excess of sodium concentrations is described. In this continuous process, strontium is extracted from acidic (0.9 M) solution using a substoichiometric amount of dicyclohexano-18-crown-6 (0.1 M in CHCl 3 ). Extracted strontium is readily stripped from an organic phase with water and concentrated onto an ion exchanger. This process allows a high strontium decontamination factor (250) with a very important extraction factor (5000).