Chop-leach process

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

In nuclear technology, the chop-leach process refers to the cutting (“chop”) and dissolving (“leach”) of spent fuel elements as part of the reprocessing process.

The fuel elements to be reprocessed are taken from the storage pool at the location of the reprocessing plant, measured for burnup and transported to the dismantling cell. There, the head and foot sections of the fuel assemblies are first cut off with bundle shears. The fuel rods are then cut into pieces about 5 cm long with a pair of massive bundle scissors. These consist of the cladding tube made of zircalloy and the nuclear fuel contained therein. The fuel rod pieces fall into the dissolver, which is filled with hot nitric acid, where the nuclear fuel is chemically released from the sleeves. The components of the nuclear fuel ( uranium , plutonium , waste materials) are then separated from one another using the PUREX process . The radioactive empty tubes are further treated separately.