Uranium recovery can reduce the mass of waste and possibly the number of waste packages that require geologic disposal. Separated uranium can be managed with the same method (near-surface burial) as used for the larger quantities of depleted uranium or recycled into new fuel. Recycle of all transuranics reduces long-term environmental burden, reduces heat load to repositories, extracts more energy from the original uranium ore, and may have significant proliferation resistance and physical security advantages. Recovery of short-lived fission products cesium and strontium can allow them to decay to low-level waste in facilities tailored to that need, rather than geologic disposal. This could also reduce the number and cost of waste packages requiring geologic disposal. These savings are offset by costs for separation, recycle, and storage systems. Recovery of technetium-99 and iodine- 129 can allow them to be sent to geologic disposal in improved waste forms. Such separation avoids contamination of the other products (uranium) and waste (cesium-strontium) streams with long-lived radioisotopes so the material might be disposed as low-level waste. Transmutation of technetium and iodine is a possible future alternative.
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