Abstract/Summary

Developments in the waste management of radioactive high-level liquid waste produced in the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle will further develop the public approval of nuclear power as an alternative to the combustion of depleting supplies of fossil fuels. Even though the minor actinides contribute to ca. 0.1 % of spent nuclear fuel by mass, they significantly contribute to the relative radiotoxicity of the waste and constitute a thermal burden. In order to transmute the minor actinides into shorter-lived more stable isotopes, they must be isolated from the remaining waste, and especially separated from the very similar trivalent lanthanides. This thesis outlinesthe synthesis and extraction capability of N-donor extractants for the difficult separation of trivalent minor actinides [An(III)] from the chemically similar trivalent lanthanides [Ln(III)] in advanced nuclear fuel cycles. The use of solid-supported extractants including magnetic nanoparticles and macroscopic silica gel for their separation together with recovery of fission/corrosion products present in PUREX streams is also reported.