In recent years interest in the United States in the nuclear field has been turning towards power reactors. Among the many problems that must be solved before economical electrical power can be produced from nuclear reactors are the problems connected with the processing of spent reactor fuels. The only reactor fuel processing methods available at present, the aqueous processes, are relatively complex, destroy the metallic character of the fuel, require "long-cooled" fuels necessitating high inventories of fissionable material, and leave huge volumes of radioactive waste solutions to be processed and stored.