Separation for transmutation

Research Project, 2012 – 2016

The main difficulty in separating out the useful elements from the used nuclear fuel is to separate the trivalent actinides from the trivalent lanthanides, and also to be able to design a separation process that limits proliferation issues. Historically our group has been successful to develop actinide and lanthanide separation processes, e.g. the SANX process together with our European colleagues. In the last years we have developed a new GANEX (Group Actinide Extraction) system where all the actinides are separated together from the rest of the used fuel. Although this process is not tested using real spent nuclear fuel, it shows excellent promise from the separation point of view. Some issues relating to the selection of diluent remain though. Thus the main focus of our group is to do the basic science needed to in detail understand the extraction systems in use and at the same time design and optimize whole processes.