Electroredox Procedures for Plutonium in Power Reactor Fuel Reprocessing

Reduction and oxidation (redox) steps are major process steps in the Purex process. Use is made of redox reactions to alter the valency of plutonium, uranium or neptunium with the object of producing these metals with a high degree of purity. Electro-reduction and -oxidation processes are easy to operate and control remotely. Unlike the use of redox chemicals, they do not give rise to waste salts. Convenient remote control and operation and avoidance of waste salts are especially attractive features for commercial processing of any type of power reactor fuel. Accordingly, the electrode reactions were introduced quite early as intermediate steps in reprocessing. The electrochemical decladding of spent fuels was the first process in this field to be advanced up to the technical scale in the USA (1,2,3, 4). In the sixties hydrazine stabilized U(IV) solutions, electrochemically produced, successfully substituted the traditional corrosive and salt generating ferrous sulfamate (5) reducing