Abstract

Returning precious fissile materials containing 235U, obtained from regenerated uranium, to the nuclear fuel cycle is important for the production of sustainable nuclear energy. Herein, starting from the basic single cascade separation scheme, schemes for enriching regenerated uranium are developed to satisfy the requirements for low-enriched uranium with a commercial grade and several supplementary separation conditions to the greatest extent for different considerations involving the consumption of natural uranium, scale of separation cascade, and material recovery. Double- and triple-cascade schemes are derived from the consideration of improving the basic scheme by eliminating its drawbacks such as the contamination of the entire cascade by artificial nuclides. All schemes are optimized based on a Q-model cascade and are compared. The results demonstrate that the triple-cascade scheme exhibits a good separation performance and may be a good choice among the existing schemes. However, the concentration of 235U in this scheme exceeds the limitation specified by the international standard for handling fissile materials; therefore, this scheme requires further improvement.

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