>I think reprocessing is actually cheaper than creating a new rod because you don't have to do as much enrichment of the uranium material. What I meant is the rod produces less power than a fresh replacement so it's better for the operator to replace it with a new rod to keep the reactor at it's design output.
At best, reprocessing produces MOX fuel at a similar price to fuel from natural uranium. It is only when the cost of waste treatment is reduced that it becomes economically viable.
Uranium from a fuel assembly is completely depleted, containing almost no fissile isotopes. The neutron poisons have to be removed and it has to be mixed with uranium and plutonium oxides so that it reaches a sufficient level of enrichment to be used in a pressurised water reactor. They produce as much power as a new assembly. It's quite difficult to run a reactor at anything other than 100% nominal power.
> The main reason the US is against it is because of old Cold War concerns about countries using it to harvest plutonium which is created in small amounts in regular reactors so there's a small concern that reprocessing would allow secretive creation of plutonium for nuclear weapons while appearing to be a purely peaceful civilian nuclear fuel reprocessing system.
Plutonium from a pressurised water reactor is too impure for military use. It is polluted with actinides, which are neutron poisons. It is the techniques for separating plutonium and actinides that are problematic.
It was possible to use civilian reactors to produce weapons-grade plutonium with graphite-gas reactors. It was possible to load and unload fuel during operation. This allowed the fuel to be ‘cooked’ just to the right point to produce plutonium and little other element. These reactors are obsolete (intense gaze in the direction of the UK).
