
147Engineering Issues
The solubility of reactor fuel (mostly uranium oxide) in nitric acid is less than
500g/L, and the weapons-grade Pu content of the fuel is no more than a few tenths
of a percent of the U. This means that the total chemical-reagent volume used in the
early steps of an aqueous fuel-reprocessing procedure is on the order of 10 L/g ofPu.
Therefore,
impurities
in
the
reagents
introduce
roughly
a
milligram
of
natural
Nd
into the process for each gram of Pu, which is associated with 75 mg of ssion-
product
Nd
(Table
3.2).
Even
if
decontamination
factors
for
Nd
in
the
reprocessing
are
10
8
, approximately 1 ng of the ...