Chemical engineering in fuel reprocessing - the French experience

Fuel reprocessing implements, basically, a chemical process, with some mechanical steps for head-end operations. A modern reprocessing plant is characterized by the following: use of an efficient process to meet end product specifications, to achieve a high recovery yield of these products, to comply with radioactive release restrictions and to process all the waste for final disposal, stringent safety criteria to guarantee personnel and environmental protection under all circumstances, highest achievable reliability and maintenance capabilities to ensure production availability. To meet performance standards, a rather complex process, the so called PUREX process, is implemented, including multiple functions and requiring a large number of unique pieces of process equipment