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Pyroprocessing of nuclear fuel rods, as an alternative to nuclear reprocessing, only attempts to combine separated plutonium with other, such as neptunium, americium, or curium. Theoretically, you could still reuse mixed, pyroprocessed plutonium to generate nuclear power, but it wouldn’t be pure enough for other uses.
The used salt from pyroprocessing is less suitable for conversion into glass than the waste materials produced by the PUREX process. If the goal is to reduce the longevity of spent nuclear fuel in burner reactors, then better recovery rates of the minor actinides need to be achieved.
Reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel by the PUREX method, first developed in the 1940s to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons, [1] was demonstrated commercially in Belgium to partially re-fuel a LWR in the 1960s. [2] This aqueous chemical process continues to be used commercially to separate reactor grade plutonium (RGPu) for reuse as MOX fuel ...
The advanced reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel is a potential key to achieve a sustainable nuclear fuel cycle and to tackle the heavy burden of nuclear waste management. In particular, the development of such advanced reprocessing systems may save natural resources, reduce waste inventory and enhance the public acceptance of nuclear energy.
The doubling time is the amount of time it would take for a breeder reactor to produce enough new fissile material to replace the original fuel and additionally produce an equivalent amount of fuel for another nuclear reactor. This was considered an important measure of breeder performance in early years, when uranium was thought to be scarce.
SEOUL (Reuters) -North Korea has halted the nuclear reactor at its main atomic complex, probably to extract plutonium that could be used for weapons by reprocessing spent fuel rods, a South Korean ...
Russia spent nearly a decade developing techniques similar to nuclear pyroprocessing that allows them to reprocess spent nuclear fuel without separating the recycled uranium and plutonium as is done in the PUREX chemical reprocessing system used to manufacture MOX fuel.
As the fuel of a LFTR is a molten salt mixture, it is attractive to use pyroprocessing, high temperature methods working directly with the hot molten salt. Pyroprocessing does not use radiation sensitive solvents and is not easily disturbed by decay heat. It can be used on highly radioactive fuel directly from the reactor. [31]