Radiotoxic actinide separation from

Shukla, J.P. et al., Separation of radiotoxic actinides from reprocessing wastes with liquid membranes, ACS Symposium Series in Chemical Separation with Liquid Membranes, Bartsch, R.A. and Wey, J.D. (Eds.), American Chemical Society, Washington DC, 1996, chapter 27. 

Separation of Radiotoxic Actinides from Reprocessing Wastes with Liquid Membranes... 

In summary, if a substantial majority of actinides are recycled (which will be necessary for us to tap the majority of the potential energy of uranium and thorium resources), then the waste stream from fission power will consist of a very small volume of fission products along with a small fraction of lost actinides. This waste can be readily immobilized in an insoluble material, such as borosilicate glass. The efficiency of actinide-separation technology will determine whether this waste inventory will decay to ore-level radiotoxicity in hundreds of years or thousands of years. Thus, improvements in separation technology may have a significant impact on the waste-isolation time and on public acceptance of fission power. 

As a part of our comprehensive programme on membrane technology, we evaluated nondispersive solvent extraction (NDSX) with a hydrophobic microporous hollow fiber contactor (HFC) for the separation and removal of actinides [1,10-12]. As the separation and recovery of actinides from different sources is paramount to radiotoxicity, there is a constant need for advances in the field. Among recently developed technologies, membrane extraction using microporous hollow fibers is particularly... 

---