Research Progress on Spent Oxide Fuels by Electrochemical Reduction in Molten Salts

Pyrometallurgical process can be applied to the reprocessing of fast reactor spent fuels. The molten salt electrorefining process developed by Argonne National Laboratory(ANL) is currently one of the most promising pyrometallurgical process. In order to apply the electrorefining process to the reprocessing of spent oxide fuels, it is necessary to convert spent oxide fuels into metals. At present, the electrochemical reduction technique is the most widely used to reduce the spent oxide fuels, while there are still key scientific and technical problems to be solved in this process. This review is focused on the research progress concerning the electrochemical reduction of spent oxide fuels, and is involved in the following main parts: process introduction, current research status and electrochemical reduction mechanism.