Actinide partitioning and recovery of valuables from nuclear waste solutions

Fission products like 137Cs and 90Sr contribute significantly towards radiologically toxicity in high level wastes while the PGMs pose a problem of homogeneity during the vitrification of high level wastes. The separation of these fission products from high level wastes will go a long way to ease the waste disposal problem. In addition, some of the recovered fission products are valuables as they find numerous applications as irradiators, compact power sources etc. There is a need to synthesize highly selective reagents such as crown ethers and calixcrowns, which can selectively remove these valuables from high level wastes