Practicality of a plasma mass filter for nuclear fuel reprocessing: Separating lanthanides from actinides

There is a growing recognition^{1, 2} of the need for used nuclear fuel recycling technologies that are more proliferation-resistant alternatives to the Plutonium/Uranium refining by extraction (PUREX). However, the implementation of a closed fuel cycle, and more precisely of the minor actinides transmutation step, requires removing a priori the lanthanides. The chemical separation options remain limited because of the chemical similarity of americium with the lanthanides fission products. Separating lanthanides from actinides has therefore been labeled as one of the most difficult challenge in separation science³.