The technical feasibility of plutonium recovery will indeed increase with time as the
fission product radiation barrier decays away.
This cycle is potentially much cheaper than conventional Pu separation and recycle into LWRs, since relatively simple steps can be used to remove only the
fission products from the spent fuel.
Fission products are initially vaporised, rise to great heights in the atmosphere, condense, and fall back to the ground globally over months or years as 'global fallout.
Antineutrinos are produced not only in the decay of uranium, thorium, and potassium isotopes but in a variety of others, including
fission products in nuclear power reactors.
About 3% of the mass of spent nuclear fuel consists of
fission products including strontium-90.
HIGH MILK CONTAMINATION FROM NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS--Radioactive contamination of milk is likely to be "the most widespread hazard" resulting from a nuclear accident or explosion depositing
fission products on agricultural land, according to recent studies in England reported in a forthcoming issue of Nature.
Topics include extracting radioactive elements by calixarenes, the simultaneous removal of radionuclides by extractant mixtures, the radiolysis of solvents used in nuclear fuel reprocessing, automating extraction chromagraphic and ion-exchange separations for radiochemical analysis and monitoring, and neoteric solvents as the basis for alternative approaches to separating actinides and
fission products.
