Measurement of Thermal Decomposition Temperature and Rate of Sodium Hydride

In decommissioning sodium-cooled fast reactors, the operators can be exposed to radiation during dismantling of cold trap equipment (C/T). The C/T is higher dose equipment because the C/T trapped tritium of fission products during the operation to purify the sodium coolant. In this study, thermal decomposition temperature and rate of sodium hydride (NaH) were measured as a fundamental research for development of “thermolysis” process prior to the dismantling. We measured the thermal decomposition temperature and rate using NaH powder (95.3%, Sigma-Aldrich) in alumina pan with ThermoGravimetry-Differential Thermal Analysis (TG-DTA) instrument (STA2500 Regulus, NETZSCH Japan). The heating rates of TG-DTA were set to β = 2.0, 5.0, 10.0 and 20.0 K/min. The DTA showed endothermic reaction and the TG showed two-steps mass-loss over 580K. This first-step mass-loss was consistent with change of chemical composition of the NaH with heating (NaH → Na+1/2H2). The thermal decomposition temperature and rate were obtained from the onset temperature of the mass-loss and the simplified Kissinger plots, respectively. Furthermore, we set to the thermal decomposition temperature of around 590K, and the mass-loss rates were measured. As a result, over 590K, the thermal decomposition occurred actively, and showed good agreement with the estimation curves obtained by the simplified Kissinger plots. The thermal decomposition rate strongly depended on the heating temperature.