There has been a resurgence of interest in the possibility of processing the US spent nuclear fuel, instead of burying it in a geologic repository. Accordingly, key topical findings from three relevant EPRI evaluations made in the 1990-1995 timeframe are recapped and updated to accommodate a few developments over the subsequent ten years. Views recently expressed by other US entities are discussed.

This report defines issues that need to be addressed by a development program recently initiated to establish the viability of a transuranic program recently initiated to establish the viability of a transuranic burning concept application that would achieve a substantial delay to the need date for a second geologic repository. The visualized transuranic burning concept application is one in which spent fuel created after a date in the 2010 timeframe or later would be processed and the separated plutonium used to start up liquid metal reactors.

This evaluation investigates the potential benefits of separating the transuranic elements from spent reactor fuel before it is disposed of in geologic repositories. It addresses the question: Would the benefits to radioactive waste disposal justify both processing the spent fuel and deploying liquid metal reactors (LMRs) to transmute the separated transuranics?

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