Values of Recovered Uranium from HALEU Used Nuclear Fuels (Rev. 1)
- Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
- Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
The value of the recovered uranium (RU) from high assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) used nuclear fuels was evaluated. Three utilizations of the recovered uranium were considered in this study, which include the cases that RU is used as a fissile material of nuclear fuel, RU is reused in the original advanced reactor after reenrichment, and RU is reused in conventional light water reactors after down-blending. In this study, the RU values were identified by comparing the cost of making a unit mass of fuel with RU versus the fuel cost with the equivalent fresh enriched uranium (EU). A series of bounding analyses for calculating the fuel costs were conducted using several selected reactor types, which include microreactors, advanced thermal reactors, and fast reactors having a burnup of 2 – 165 GWd/t (with residual U-235 content in discharged fuels of 0.8 - 19.6%). This study concludes that RU having a residual U-235 content higher than ~7% would cost less than the fresh EU. The affordability increases as the residual U-235 content in RU increases. For instance, the fuel cost with RU having the residual U-235 content of 19.6% is about 85% cheaper than the fuel cost with the equivalent fresh EU. This study observed that reusing RU after reenrichment in the original microreactor is impractical because the U-235 content in the re-enriched RU fuel would need to be higher than the limit for low-enriched uranium (<20%) to provide the same burnup performance due to parasitic absorption from U-236. It is noted that this study focused on the recovery of uranium only, and the value of other fissile materials (such as Pu) in the used nuclear fuel was not considered even though those are bred significantly in fast reactors. In addition, the impacts of uncertainties in the cost data and the value of RU of TRISO fuels were not evaluated in this study due to the limited information on the cost data uncertainties and the separation cost from TRISO fuels.
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-06CH11357
- OSTI ID:
- 2340136
- Report Number(s):
- ANL/NSE--23/77-Rev.1; 188425
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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