Innovative separation method for advanced spent fuel reprocessing based on tertiary pyridine resin

Ozawa, Masaki; Koyama, Shinichi  ; Suzuki, Tatsuya*; Fujii, Yasuhiko*

Radiochemical separation experiments have been performed in order to realize a novel reprocessing method based on ion-exchange technique. The newly synthesized soft-donor type tertiary pyridine resin was dedicated to the experiments, where highly irradiated mixed oxide fuel from the experimental fast reactor JOYO was used as a reference spent fuel. With a 3 step separation, pure Am and Cm were individually obtained as MA products, and Ru group, Lns with Cs (HLLW group) and Pu group were fractionated, respectively. The decontamination factor of Cs and trivalent lanthanides (Eu, Ce) in the Am product exceeded 39,000 and 100,000, respectively. The decontamination factor for the mutual separation of Cm and Am was larger than 2200 for the Am product. Moreover, the content of Cs, trivalent lanthanides and Cm in Am product did not exceed 2 ppm. The tertiary pyridine resin method suggests a reality as a candidate separation system for an "advanced ORIENT process", where total separation, transmutation and utilization of An, LLFP and rare metal fission product (RMFP) were oriented.