A few days ago, China Central Television announced a breakthrough in nuclear fuel technology. The China National Nuclear Cooperation (CNNC) has developed a way of recycling old nuclear fuel, it claims. The method is “100 percent original,” says Wang Jian, chief engineer on CNNC’s fuel reprocessing project.

That statement has led to some over-the-top announcements in the Western press. Some outlets have reported the technology as entirely new, others say it is an official acknowledgment that China can reprocess nuclear fuel.

In truth, both of these statements might be overplaying the announcement. First off, China has already mastered the art of reprocessing, which involves the chemical separation of plutonium and uranium from used nuclear fuel. The Chinese military has been doing since 1975 for its nuclear weapons programme, and the CNNC opened a pilot reprocessing centre at the Lanzhou Nuclear Fuel Complex in 2006. According to the World Nuclear Association, which keeps track of such things, the plant is capable of reprocessing about 100 tonnes per year using the 1940s-era Purex method of plutonium extraction. The organisation also points out that in November of 2007, the French nuclear giant Areva signed a deal with CNNC to set up a reprocessing plant in Jiayuguan in the Gansu province of China, where this “breakthrough” came from.

So what is actually going on? The original CCTV article doesn’t provide much information, but one hint is that the new process extracts fuel during the “heating period” after the fuel is used. Another clue is that the technology reportedly boosts fuel efficiency by about 60 times. Those details could point to some kind of fast-neutron reactor, which can convert hot actinides in spent nuclear fuel into material that can be used in other power plants. These reactors are about 60 times more efficient that current ones. Moreover, China began operating a 65MW fast neutron reactor in July of last year (though that reactor appears to be based in Beijing).

My own guess is that the announcement is in some way related to both reprocessing and China’s fast reactor programme, although how remains to be seen. One thing I am fairly certain of: there’s nothing earth-shatteringly new about these new developments.