Each year, more than 10 thousand tons of spent fuels are discharged from nuclear power plants in the world. Heavy element nuclear fission reactions, at the origin of energy production, generate fission products of intermediary mass, some of them being considered nowadays as critical raw materials. | Progress in Nuclear Energy 94 2017 222e228 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Progress in Nuclear Energy journal homepage locate pnucene Could spent nuclear fuel be considered as a non-conventional mine of critical raw materials phane Bourg Christophe Poinssot Ste French Atomic and Alternative Energy Commission Nuclear Energy Division RadioChemistry amp Processes Department CEA Marcoule BP 11 F-30207 Bagnols sur Ceze France a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history Each year more than 10 thousand tons of spent fuels are discharged from nuclear power plants in the Received 31 December 2015 world. Heavy element nuclear fission reactions at the origin of energy production generate fission Received in revised form products of intermediary mass some of them being considered nowadays as critical raw materials. The 20 July 2016 potential interest to treat these spent fuels in order to recycle these elements has risen recently following Accepted 8 August 2016 Available online 7 September 2016 increasing international tensions on their supply for industry and energy. A study was carried out on the basis of the French nuclear fuel cycle scenario in order first to evaluate the inventory of such metals in spent fuel. The only elements of interest since in significant amount would be rare earth elements REE Keywords Critical raw materials and platinum group metals PGM . However compare to the annual need of REE the amount that would Spent nuclear fuel be recovered from spent fuels represent less than of the annual world production. Because of the Recycling low price of these elements there is no economic interest for such a recovery. The case of PGM and Rare earths specifically ruthenium and rhodium is quite different. Even if a lower amount of these elements are in Ruthenium spent fuel it represents 22 for Ru and for Rh of the annual world production. The drawback is that these elements have numerous radioactive isotopes that forbid .
