Hyderabad: Used fuel may be reprocessed

Hyderabad: 'A key characteristic of nuclear energy is that used fuel may be reprocessed to recover fissile and fertile materials in order to provide fresh fuel for existing and future nuclear power plants' said Prof P S Dhami, Senior Scientist, Nuclear Reprocessing Group, BARC, Mumbai. He visited the School of Science of GITAM Deemed-to-be University, Hyderabad on Saturday as a principal collaborator for a project that was recently sanctioned to Dr Surendra Babu M S on the recovery of Sr90 resource material from nuclear waste.

On this occasion, he delivered a talk on 'Nuclear fuel recycling process and its applications'. He said that used nuclear fuel has long been reprocessed to extract fissile materials for recycling and to reduce the volume of high-level wastes.

New reprocessing technologies are being developed to be deployed in conjunction with fast neutron reactors which will burn all long-lived actinides, including all uranium and plutonium, without separating them from one another, he said. Prof G A Rama Rao, Principal, School of Science welcomed the guest, introduced to the students and felicitated him. Dr Rambabu Gundla, HoD, Chemistry Department, faculty, students participated in this talk.