Abstract
The PUREX process has been progressively and continuously improved during the past three decades, and these improvements account for successful commercialization of reprocessing in a few countries. The renewed interest in nuclear energy and the international growth of nuclear electricity generation do not equate - and should not be equated - with increasing proliferation risks. Indeed, the nuclear renaissance presents a unique opportunity to enhance the culture of non-proliferation. With the recent revival of interest in nuclear technology, technical methods for prevention of nuclear proliferation are being revisited. Robust strategies to develop new advanced separation technologies are emerging worldwide for sustainability and advancement of nuclear energy with a decrease in proliferation risks. On the other hand, at this moment, advanced technologies with reduced proliferation risks are being developed. Until now proliferation resistance as it applies to reprocessing has been focused on not separating a pure stream of weapons-usable plutonium. France, as an example, has proposed a variant of the PUREX process, the COEXTM process, which does not result on a pure plutonium product stream. A further step is to implement a process based on group extraction of actinides and fission products associated with a homogeneous recycling strategy (UNEX process in the U.S., GANEX process in France). Such scheme will most likely not be deployable on an industrial scale before 2030 or so because it requires intensive R&D and robust flow-sheets. Finally, future generation recycling schemes will likely handle the used nuclear fuel in fast neutron reactors. This means that the plutonium throughput of the recycling process may increase. The need is obvious for advanced aqueous recycling technologies that have less proliferation risk than the commercial PUREX process. In this paper, we review the actual PUREX process along with the advanced recycling technologies that will enhance technical barriers that make plutonium diversion more difficult by either not isolating plutonium and/or coexistence of fission products with plutonium.
