Purex process extraction cycles: a potential for progress today

The Purex process very quickly and very widely supplanted the other concepts considered for nuclear fuel reprocessing after the presentation made at the Geneva Conference in 1955. The selectivity and radiolytic stability of tributylphosphate (T.B.P) clearly appeared to augur an extremely attractive process for completing the separation of valuable elements in the irradiated fuel. The concept has confirmed its validity, and subsequently its ability to adapt to changing requirements or constraints. Its industrial viability is in fact unquestioned today: Purex process is the basis of all the reprocessing plants in operation or planned throughout the world, and recent commissioning of the UP3 plant in France, in remarkable conditions, attests to such a level of maturity that one is tempted to ask the question: ''What remains to be proved, discovered or improved in the core of the Purex process?''. (authors). 7 refs., 4 tabs