Great overview of the technical and economic challenges of reprocessing, but there is particular error I think it necessary to point out:
"The fuel required for pyroprocessing, metallic uranium-plutonium-zirconium alloy, is used in no commercial power plant anywhere in the world including those Russian, Chinese and Indian fast reactors all of which use MOX."
This is not correct; in fact, the very process diagram you use illustrates the head-end oxide reduction process which would be a necessary pre-conditioning step for an oxide-based fuel input to pyroprocessing. Yes, the fuel needs to be a metallic form before electrochemical separations, but this is the whole point of the oxide reduction process.
It's plenty fair to point to the lack of scale-up demonstrated for electrochemical processing, especially as in its current form, it has only been demonstrated as a batch process rather than a continuous process like aqueous processes such as PUREX. But it's not impossible to adapt it to an oxide-based fuel cycle.
Great overview of the technical and economic challenges of reprocessing, but there is particular error I think it necessary to point out:
"The fuel required for pyroprocessing, metallic uranium-plutonium-zirconium alloy, is used in no commercial power plant anywhere in the world including those Russian, Chinese and Indian fast reactors all of which use MOX."
This is not correct; in fact, the very process diagram you use illustrates the head-end oxide reduction process which would be a necessary pre-conditioning step for an oxide-based fuel input to pyroprocessing. Yes, the fuel needs to be a metallic form before electrochemical separations, but this is the whole point of the oxide reduction process.
It's plenty fair to point to the lack of scale-up demonstrated for electrochemical processing, especially as in its current form, it has only been demonstrated as a batch process rather than a continuous process like aqueous processes such as PUREX. But it's not impossible to adapt it to an oxide-based fuel cycle.
Thank you for this feedback. We do cover the oxide reduction process in the episode but perhaps dont give it enough credit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWzI72snmE0&t=5128s