PUREX
Sign in to savethumb|upright=1.1|Reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel by the PUREX method, first developed in the 1940s to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons, was demonstrated commercially in Belgium to partially re-fuel a LWR in the 1960s. This aqueous chemical process continues to be used commercially to separate [[reactor grade plutonium (RGPu) for reuse as MOX fuel. It remains controversial, as plutonium can be used to make nuclear weapons.]]
Article
9 sectionsContents
- Chemical process
- PUREX raffinate
- Pollution
- History
- List of nuclear reprocessing sites
- See also
- References and notes
- Further reading
- External links
thumb|upright=1.1|Reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel by the PUREX method, first developed in the 1940s to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons, was demonstrated commercially in Belgium to partially re-fuel a LWR in the 1960s. This aqueous chemical process continues to be used commercially to separate [[reactor grade plutonium (RGPu) for reuse as MOX fuel. It remains controversial, as plutonium can be used to make nuclear weapons.]]
thumb|upright=1.3|The most developed, though commercially unfielded, alternative reprocessing method, is pyroprocessing, suggested as part of the depicted metallic-fueled, [[integral fast reactor (IFR) a sodium fast reactor concept of the 1990s. After the spent fuel is dissolved in molten salt, all of the recyclable actinides, consisting largely of plutonium and uranium though with important minor constituents, are extracted using electrorefining/electrowinning. The resulting mixture keeps the plutonium at all times in an unseparated gamma and alpha emitting actinide form which is also mildly self-protecting in theft scenarios.]]