ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Jan 2026
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
February 2026
Nuclear Technology
January 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
November 2025
Latest News
Canada’s General Fusion to become publicly traded company
General Fusion has entered into a definitive business combination agreement with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. (SVAC) that would make General Fusion the first publicly traded pure-play fusion firm, the company announced on January 22. The business combination is projected to be completed in mid-2026.
Yuezhou Wei, Tsuyoshi Arai, Harutaka Hoshi, Mikio Kumagai, Aimé Bruggeman, Patrick Goethals
Nuclear Technology | Volume 149 | Number 2 | February 2005 | Pages 217-231
Technical Paper | Reprocessing | doi.org/10.13182/NT05-A3591
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We have studied a new aqueous reprocessing system that consists of anion exchange as the main separation method, electrolytic reduction for reducing U(VI) to U(IV), and extraction chromatography for minor actinide partitioning. In this work, hot tests were carried out on the main flow sheet (U and Pu recovery) using a nitric acid solution of a spent commercial boiling water reactor fuel with burnup of 55 000 MWd/t HM. First, a separation experiment was conducted using a column packed with AR-01 anion exchanger, and the separation behavior of about 20 elements was examined. Then electrolytic reduction was performed for the U(VI) eluate from the first column using a flow-type electrolysis cell. Subsequently, the reduced U solution was applied to the second AR-01 column to separate the U(IV) from contaminated fission products. Most amounts of Pu(IV)-Np(IV), were successfully separated and recovered in the first column. In the electrolysis, U(VI), Np(V,VI), and a trace amount of Pu(VI) were reduced to U(IV), Np(IV), and Pu(IV), respectively. In the second column, the U(IV) with small amounts of Np(IV) and Pu(IV) was completely separated from the fission products. These results demonstrated that the proposed U and Pu recovery process is essentially feasible, though more effective elution methods for Pd and Tc need to be investigated further.