Analyzing Losses: Transuranics into Waste and Fission Products into Recycled Fuel

All mass streams from separations and fuel fabrication are products that must meet criteria. Those headed for disposal must meet waste acceptance criteria (WAC) for the eventual disposal sites corresponding to their waste classification. Those headed for reuse must meet fuel or target impurity limits. A “loss” is any material that ends up where it is undesired. The various types of losses are linked in the sense that as the loss of transuranic (TRU) material into waste is reduced, often the loss or carryover of waste into TRU or uranium is increased. We have analyzed four separation options and two fuel fabrication options in a generic fuel cycle. The separation options are aqueous uranium extraction plus (UREX+1), electrochemical, Atomics International reduction oxidation separation (AIROX), and melt refining. UREX+1 and electrochemical are traditional, full separation techniques. AIROX and melt refining are taken as examples of limited separations, also known as minimum fuel treatment. The fuels are oxide and metal. To define a generic fuel cycle, a fuel recycling loop is fed from used light water reactor (LWR) uranium oxide fuel (UOX) at 51 MWth-day/kg-iHM burnup. The recycling loop uses a fast reactor with TRU conversion ratio (CR) of 0.50. Excess recovered uranium is put into storage. Only waste, not used fuel, is disposed – unless the impurities accumulate to a level so that it is impossible to make new fuel for the fast reactor. Impurities accumulate as dictated by separation removal and fission product generation. Our model approximates adjustment to fast reactor fuel stream blending of TRU and U products from incoming LWR UOX and recycling FR fuel to compensate for impurity accumulation by adjusting TRU:U ratios. Our mass flow model ignores postulated fuel impurity limits; we compare the calculated impurity values with those limits to identify elements of concern. AIROX and melt refining cannot be used to separate used LWR UOX-51 because they cannot separate U from TRU, it is then impossible to make X% TRU for fast reactors with UOX-51 used fuel with 1.3% TRU. AIROX and melt refining can serve in the recycle loop for about 3 recycles, at which point the accumulated impurities displace fertile uranium and the fuel can no longer be as critical as the original fast reactor fuel recipe. UREX+1 and electrochemical can serve in either capacity; key impurities appear to be lanthanides and several transition metals.