Behaviour of Minor Actinides in a Large Reprocessing Plant.

Minor actinides have been under careful scrutiny these last few years. The behaviour of neptunium, americium and curium have been studieed in the La Hague reprocessing plant. The presentation is made to show the distribution of neptunium, mainly, americium and curium in the plant. The first extraction cycle seperates fission products, americium, curium and partly neptunium from U and Pu. It seperates also Pu from U. The most part of the neptunium follows the uranium purification line. All raffinates of the U and Pu purification lines are concentrated and mixed to the raffinate of the first cycle in the input tank of the HALW treatment facility, then they are vitrified all together. The key points where they can be removed from the process have been pointed out. In case of Safeguards interest, an idea for doing qualitative verification of the absense of their removal using an internal tracer has been developed specially for Np. This approach has been tested on a full year campaign.