Impact of Copper(II) on Activation Product Removal from Reactor Decommissioning Effluents in South Korea

•Cu recovery kinetics are very fast, with pseudo-second order rate constants being up to 2 orders of magnitude higher than other, similar extractants.•Increasing influent flow rate has no effect on Cu2+ recovery in a column loading system.•Cu2+ is extracted preferentially to Co2+ and Ni2+ by EBP-Si.•Cu2+ extraction behaviour is complicated, with a change in mechanism being observed for [Cu2+] >0.04M.