Reprocessing wastes, radiotoxic actinide

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... 

Carrier-facilitated transport of actinides across bulk, supported, and emulsion liquid membranes, as well as plasticized membranes and recently developed emulsion-free liquid membranes, are reviewed. The discussion includes the effects of important experimental variables upon the solute flux for various types of liquid membranes. Applications of liquid membranes in the recovery and removal of radiotoxic actinides from the nitric acid wastes generated during reprocessing of spent fuel by the PUREX process and wastes produced by other radiochemical operations are surveyed. 

Nuclear waste, either in the form of spent fuel reprocessing, is associated with a radiotoxicity potential due to minor actinides (MA) and aon products (FP). The possibility of partitioning minor actinides out of the waste and transmuting them into less hazardous nuclides has been proposed and its technical feasibility is being studied. 

In the Reprocessing Fuel Cycle (RFC) option, the unused uranium and the plutonium produced in the reactor are recovered leaving the minor actinides with the fission products as HLW. (The radiotoxicity of these wastes will be significantly less than that of the spent fuel although the toxic lifetime is determined by the minor actinides - neptunium, americium, curium - and, to a lesser extent, by some of the long-lived fission products content of the waste.) As mentioned previously, this was the scenario initially envisioned by the nuclear power industry to reprocess fuel for two reasons ... 

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