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Posted on 08/21/2026 6:04:46 PM PDT by T Ruth
Spent nuclear fuel could become easier to recycle with a high-speed chemical separation system being developed by Argonne National Laboratory, SHINE and Case Western Reserve University.
The partners are working to adapt Argonne’s Packed Centrifugal Equipment for Radiochemical Separation, or PaCERS, for SHINE’s planned nuclear fuel recycling process. The technology uses rapid rotation to create centrifugal forces far stronger than normal gravity, helping separate radioactive materials more efficiently.
Unlike conventional approaches that can require large amounts of solvent and multiple processing stages, PaCERS is designed as a high-throughput, lower-solvent system. The goal is to make the chemical separation steps involved in nuclear fuel recycling more practical and economical.
The collaboration is being carried out through the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy CURIE Program, with Case Western Reserve University leading additional funding and SHINE participating as a subcontractor.
Spinning waste into resources
One target is the separation of strontium-90 and americium-241, radioactive isotopes that can have uses in medicine, manufacturing and advanced power systems. The system will also be used to help recover minor actinides, a group of long-lived radioactive materials left behind after other elements have been extracted from spent fuel.
That could give nuclear fuel recycling a broader purpose than simply recovering uranium and plutonium. Instead, different components of spent fuel could be separated and directed toward applications where they have value.
“Spent nuclear fuel is a tremendous resource, having many valuable materials that can be recovered instead of stored or even worse, disposed of. We already separate radioactive materials to produce medical isotopes today, and we’re applying that same expertise to help push PaCERS toward practical use,” said Ross Radel, CTO of SHINE. “It’s another piece of the work we’re doing to make nuclear energy effectively renewable.”
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(Excerpt) Read more at interestingengineering.com ...
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Those wacky physicists.
This looks like another practical step useful in reestablishing nuclear power as a viable and economical source of electricity. Overcoming the naysayers one step at a time!
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Very technical stuff. s/
What kind of G forces do these centrifuges generate?
Are they using spent nuclear waste fuel or uranium ore recently mined
Nuclear material can easily be recycled and reused. I think it was Carter who shut down the Tennessee facility that did this years ago. i know a lot of the nuclear material that the plants used came from decommissioned Russian nuclear missiles negotiated during the cold war.
If I remember, Pres Carter executive order banned nuclear fuel recycling.
I am not sure if this still stands, otherwise Trump executive order should fix it!
There is a lot of valuable stuff in “nuclear waste”.
That sounds a great way to try to kill the hero in a James Bond movie, or a superhero flick.
I remember when I read Dickens’ Great Expectations, and Orlick threatened to kill Pip in a kiln, so there’d be nothing left of him but dust. Very effective way to get rid of a body.
I imagine such a centrifuge would turn a human body into a crushed jelly.
That sounds a great way to try to kill the hero in a James Bond movie, or a superhero flick.
I remember when I read Dickens’ Great Expectations, and Orlick threatened to kill Pip in a kiln, so there’d be nothing left of him but dust. Very effective way to get rid of a body.
I imagine such a centrifuge would turn a human body into a crushed jelly.
There were pictures of a big factory area with about 50-100 centrifuges spinning along in synchronicity.
Our people in the CIA somehow tapped into the Iranian computerized power supply for that area and signaled all the centerfuges to speed up--completely wrecking all the progress that had been made for a months.
The Iranian scientists in charge of the ruined operation were definely not happy to survey the smoking mess.
No doubt, full protection from that kind of assault is presently in place for all concerned.
Wasn’t Iran using centrifuges to produce A-bomb materials? Didn’t we, or Israel, sabotage this by causing the centrifuges to overspeed?
Computer virus Stuxnet.
Possibly, but first you must convert human to the gaseous human hexaflouride and only deal with a few grams at a time.
It always has been viable. Nuclear energy became a red headed stepchild due to the most successful propaganda from the Soviet Union of old. Today the same type propaganda against petroleum and coal and gas exists. It is the same song different singer but it is all about weakening the USA.
Thus today we have shortages of electricity when we should be trying to give it away on the cheap. Windmills suck as the wind does not always blow as the sun does not shine 24 hours a day and thus solar sucks also.
I am not against solar nor wind so long as it is cost competitive and is not subsidized by me the taxpayer. Without subsidies both are dead meat.
All industries have environmental impact some minor and some major. There must be a balance on decisions, between impact on ecology and the good that the industry, the mine, the farm, the hydro-electric damn, the oil well etc. does.
Coal burning plants of many years ago were dirty as hell and the mining process to get the coal was frankly obscene in Appalachia. That is no more. Our coal burning plants are efficient and clean and emit plant food, also called CO2. The devastation of strip mining in Appalachia is no more. They still strip mine but must restore the environment after.
PS
The EPA was a much-needed organization when first initiated. At the time industry was environmentally raping us as they did not want to do it the right way but the cheap way. That is no more. However, the EPA has morphed into a political agency of the left and is now a burden on our nation. It has become basically left-wing anti-capitalist.
The problem isn’t reprocessing spent fuel the technology is straight forward. The issue is dealing with the highly irradiated cladding from removing the fuel from the bundles. There is no known way to make the alloy cladding non-radioactive. We need long term storage to make reprocessing viable.
Bfl
Yes!
Make those horrid solar arrays, battery storage and windmill farms go away
The problem is large capital expenditures don’t get made, when some clown can outlaw it yet again at the stroke of a pen. Not worth the risk, not even a little bit. That was one thing that made America such a great place to do business, a certain predictability about the future, insofar as that’s possible. All that is gone now.
We need long term storage to make reprocessing viable.
If only there were some sort of underground storage facility in a remote area for such things. Maybe somewhere out in Nevada, some place like that. Oh well.
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