Richland five-year O2 R and D Program: Enriched fuel processing

In anticipation of a continuing trend for reductions in military plutonium requirements, reactor programs at the Richland site are being directed toward other long-term production objectives. For the general case of an alternate reactor product, uranium-238 would be displaced from the reactor by another target material, e.g., lithium (for tritium production) or neptunium-237 (for plutonium-238 production), and the remaining fuel would require higher enrichment (increase of uranium-235 concentration) to maintain reactor reactivity. The operating fuel reprocessing facilities at Hanford were originally designed for the processing of fuels containing less than one percent U-235 (pre-irradiation basis). Today, limited amounts of a ``spike`` fuel, averaging about 1.15 percent U-235, are included in the production load, and demonstration quantities of 2.1 percent enriched coproduct fuels have been processed under special test support conditions. Anticipated reactor programs requiring higher enrichment fuels pose new problems of reprocessing technology. These problems have their bases in the increased U-235 content of the fuel, and in the material and design features provided to obtain a higher specific power in the reactor. The programs required to develop the technological bases for reprocessing proposed Hanford fuels of greater enrichments, generally in excess of one percent U-235, are described by this documen