The world’s first large nuclear reactors were built in the US during World War II to obtain plutonium-239 for nuclear weapons. Fueled with natural uranium, they produced Pu by neutron capture in 238U followed by two beta decays. The steps taken to recover the Pu and other selected components from the spent fuel constitute reprocessing.
Although reprocessing is intrinsic to a weapons program, it is optional for the commercial nuclear-power fuel cycle. The US decided in the mid-1970s against reprocessing in the commercial nuclear program, largely due to concerns about weapons proliferation. France, Japan, Russia, and others did not follow that example, and recently Congress and the US Department of Energy have shown a revived interest in reprocessing. That shift, embodied in DOE’s Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative and the more recently promulgated Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), and the weapons ambitions of North Korea and Iran have thrust the...
