Incentives for Integrating an Alpha Waste Management Strategy into the Fuel Cycle

The importance of waste categories other than high-activity waste in the context of long-term risk potential has been increasingly stressed over the last few years. Particular emphasis has been placed on the need for improved techniques for alpha waste reduction, conditioning, and disposal. One way to achieve this is based on an oxalate precipitation technique that recovers the actinides from all liquid alpha waste stream sources. As a result, a fully integrated alpha waste management is conceived that provides a rework unit for plutonium recovery, operating on line with reprocessing and with added incentives, such as savings in fissile material, reduced downtime, reduced medium level liquid waste volumes, and the possibility of confining neptunium and its precursors to a single stream.