Some views on the design and fabrication of targets or fuels containing curium

Given the shielding requirements necessary to handle curium, its separation from americium in the reprocessing step is essential to minimise material flows in the fabrication chains. The number of fuel assemblies holding americium and curium can be minimized if dedicated targets with high contents are manufactured. Given the inadequacies of powder blending and co-precipitation methods, the infiltration of porous host materials (e.g. (Zr,Y)O2, ThO2, (Zr,Y,Pu)O2, (Th,Pu)O2) is the preferred method to fabricate curium-containing targets in either Sphere-pac or pellet form. While in either case there are inherently no liquid wastes containing curium, the former reduces the number of processing steps and production scraps which would have to be recycled. There are considerable advantages in co-locating curium fabrication at the reprocessing facility, as curium in solution could be infiltrated directly in the matrix without extra precipitation, washing and calcination steps. (authors)