Nuclear Fuel, Reprocessing of

Abstract

The objective of this entry is to give a basic overview of the technology elements behind nuclear fuel reprocessing. It should serve as a starting point for more detailed study with the aid of the Bibliography section to obtain more technical details on this subject. Several more process concepts have been proposed, tested, and demonstrated other than those listed in this entry. For the sake of conciseness, only two fundamentally different technologies have been described here – aqueous and pyrochemical fuel reprocessing. In the case of pyrochemical fuel reprocessing, focus has been placed on the LiCl-KCl electrorefining technology developed originally at Argonne National Laboratory. The overall scope of nuclear fuel reprocessing technology is too broad to cover in this entry.