Ion Exchange Technology in Spent Fuel Reprocessing

摘要

Solvent extraction is the major unit operation employed in spent nuclear fuel reprocessing. The operation yields three streams; fission product waste, uranium product and plutonium product. Ion exchange is primarily used in reprocessing as a tail-end method to concentrate and isolate the plutonium product stream. This review will describe the details of plutonium recovery and purification by both cation- and anion-exchange processing. A brief overview of miscellaneous uses of ion-exchange employed in reprocessing will also be given.