Advanced Fuel Cycle Options

To comply with the sustainability goals defined for innovative reactor systems mainly the waste minimization through recycling of all actinides, the corresponding fuel cycles will play a central role in trying to achieve these goals. The new concept of a grouped actinide separation can be derived from aqueous or pyro-chemical partitioning processes of minor actinides. The present paper describes the progress made in developing this type of process for both routes. A major focus will be on the very challenging separation of lanthanides from the trivalent actinides. The process developments, especially for pyro-metallurgy, require a good basic understanding on the extraction mechanisms. Pyro-reprocessing, where all actinides are recycled, is based on metallic materials. However, the fuels even those of new generation reactors will, at least in the beginning, most likely be oxides. Therefore, a head-end reduction step for oxide fuels is needed to convert oxides into metals. In this paper results from demonstration experiments using genuine irradiated nuclear fuels will be shown.