All of this seems a little ambiguous, seeing as how they didn't...

All of this seems a little ambiguous, seeing as how they didn't mention which technology they used for enrichment, if it were by centrifuge? then what they say would hold true, but if it were using Laser that may not be the case ? as it is by isotopic separation and may just be able to separate out the U236 in a similar way they can separate SI28 and Si29 and Si30 .
I do think this is one advantage of Laser technology over centrifuge.
besides you can't tell me the US doesn't want the Pu component for reactors such as NATRIUM, if that is the case then what do they do with the Uranium bundle which makes up the largest proportion and makes disposing of that much dearer and problematic, the burial fund is now sitting at over 45Billion.
Just my own opinion!




https://fuelcycleoptions.inl.gov/Si...anium from HALEU UNF Rev 01 March 28 2024.pdf


Nuclear Fuel Cycle and
Supply Chain
Values of Recovered
Uranium from HALEU
Used Nuclear Fuels,
Revision 1

Values of Recovered Uranium from HALEU Used Nuclear Fuels
March 28, 2024 i
Executive Summary
The value of the recovered uranium (RU) from high assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) used
nuclear fuels was evaluated. Three utilizations of the recovered uranium were considered in
this study, which include the cases that RU is used as a fissile material of nuclear fuel, RU is
reused in the original advanced reactor after reenrichment, and RU is reused in conventional
light water reactors after down-blending. In this study, the RU values were identified by
comparing the cost of making a unit mass of fuel with RU versus the fuel cost with the
equivalent fresh enriched uranium (EU). A series of bounding analyses for calculating the fuel
costs were conducted using several selected reactor types, which include microreactors,
advanced thermal reactors, and fast reactors having a burnup of 2 – 165 GWd/t (with residual
U-235 content in discharged fuels of 0.8 - 19.6%).
This study concludes that RU having a residual U-235 content higher than ~7% would cost less
than the fresh EU. The affordability increases as the residual U-235 content in RU increases. For
instance, the fuel cost with RU having the residual U-235 content of 19.6% is about 85%
cheaper than the fuel cost with the equivalent fresh EU. This study observed that reusing RU
after reenrichment in the original microreactor is impractical because the U-235 content in the
re-enriched RU fuel would need to be higher than the limit for low-enriched uranium (<20%) to
provide the same burnup performance due to parasitic absorption from U-236.
It is noted that this study focused on the recovery of uranium only, and the value of other fissile
materials (such as Pu) in the used nuclear fuel was not considered even though those are bred
significantly in fast reactors. In addition, the impacts of uncertainties in the cost data and the
value of RU of TRISO fuels were not evaluated in this study due to the limited information on
the cost data uncertainties and the separation cost from TRISO fuels.