Controllability of plutonium concentration for FBR fuel at a solvent extraction process in the PUREX process

Typical Purex solvent extraction systems for the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel have a feed material containing dilute, 1% in weight, plutonium, along with uranium and fission products. Current reprocessing proposals call for no separation of the pure plutonium. The work described in this paper studied, by computer simulation, the fundamental feasibility of preparing a 20% concentrated plutonium product solution from the 1% feed by adjusting only the feed rates and acid concentrations of the incoming streams and without the addition of redox reagents for the plutonium. A set of process design flowsheets has been developed to realize a concentrated plutonium solution of a 20% stream from the dilute plutonium feed without using redox reagents. (authors)