Nuclear Waste Recycling Technology

The reprocessed uranium also known as the spent fuel material.

Nuclear fusion reaction of hydrogen equation. Nuclear reprocessing is the chemical separation of fission products and unused uranium from spent nuclear fuel. Since the main component of nuclear waste is uranium 238 which can be transmuted to plutonium especially with advanced breeder reactors we can get more energy out of the waste than in a once through cycle see factoid 2 to see how much. This nuclear fuel cycle would combine two innovations.

Pyrometallurgical processing a high temperature method of recycling reactor waste into fuel and advanced fast neutron reactors capable of. 16 2016 researchers have adapted a technology developed for solar energy in order to selectively remove one of the trickiest and most difficult to remove elements in nuclear waste pools. Nuclear fuel reprocessing is a safe activity that should be part of americas nuclear energy program.

Nuclear power is the only large scale energy producing technology that takes full responsibility for all its waste and fully costs this into the product. The amount of waste generated by nuclear power is very small relative to other thermal electricity generation technologies. This section supports member states to identify and apply safe prompt and cost effective solutions to manage all forms of radioactive waste resulting from the nuclear fuel cycle and nuclear applications.

In close coordination with other iaea programmes it fosters technology and knowledge transfer the adoption of sound policies and strategies and promotes information. Originally reprocessing was used solely to extract plutonium for producing nuclear weaponswith commercialization of nuclear power the reprocessed plutonium was recycled back into mox nuclear fuel for thermal reactors. Personnel from the us department of energys office of environmental management em working at idaho national laboratory inl are using new technology to perform in situ characterisation of the contents of hundreds of radioactive waste containers prior to shipment for permanent disposal.

After a year of recycling the spent fuel the lab has produced over 1000 pounds of near fuel grade material but jess gehin chief scientist at inls nuclear science and technology directorate. The french are proving that on a daily.