Energy - Spent fuel pellets

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have made the first mixed-oxide pellets from recycled spent nuclear fuel in a process that doesn't produce a separate plutonium stream. The work is the result of the Coupled End-to-End Demonstration Project for the Department of Energy's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. Program Manager Jeff Binder of the Nuclear Science and Technology Division said conventional reprocessing methods pull plutonium separately from the spent-fuel mix of actinides (uranium, neptunium and plutonium) and are a proliferation concern. Binder said the ORNL technique, called modified direct denitration, converts a uranium-neptunium- plutonium nitric acid solution to a solid-oxide form. Traditionally, actinides taken out of a nitric acid solution are in a glassy structure that has to be processed with steps such as milling and grinding. The solid-oxide powder from the modified direct denitration process can go right to pellet form. The process is the first separation of spent nuclear fuel where plutonium isn't pulled out by itself and the product material is taken directly to making a pellet. The work is supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy.