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The first large-scale nuclear reactors were built during World War II.These reactors were designed for the production of plutonium for use in nuclear weapons.The only reprocessing required, therefore, was the extraction of the plutonium (free of fission-product contamination) from the spent natural uranium fuel.
The first reprocessing approach is based on the PUREX (Plutonium Uranium Reduction EXtraction) process, which is the standard and mature technology applied worldwide to recover uranium and plutonium from spent nuclear fuel at industrial scale. Following the dissolution of the spent fuel in nitric acid and the removal of uranium and plutonium ...
Reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel by the PUREX method, first developed in the 1940s to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons, [1] was demonstrated commercially in Belgium to partially re-fuel a LWR in the 1960s. [2] This aqueous chemical process continues to be used commercially to separate reactor grade plutonium (RGPu) for reuse as MOX fuel ...
Nuclear reprocessing can separate spent fuel into various combinations of reprocessed uranium, plutonium, minor actinides, fission products, remnants of zirconium or steel cladding, activation products, and the reagents or solidifiers introduced in the reprocessing itself. If these constituent portions of spent fuel were reused, and additional ...
List of French Reprocessing Sites Name Location Fuel Type Procedure Status Reprocessing capacity (tHM/yr) Construction start date Operation date Closure Purpose UP-1 Marcoule: Shut down 0.001 1958 1997 Military CEA APM Marcoule: Fast Breeder PUREX, DIAMEX, SANEX: Operational 6 1988 Civil UP-2 La Hague: LWR: PUREX: Shut down 900 1967 1974 Civil ...
SEOUL (Reuters) -North Korea has halted the nuclear reactor at its main atomic complex, probably to extract plutonium that could be used for weapons by reprocessing spent fuel rods, a South Korean ...
In nuclear reprocessing plants about 96% of spent nuclear fuel is recycled back into uranium-based and mixed-oxide MOX fuels. One of the main method for the separation of spent fuel is the PUREX process, which separates the plutonium and other transuranics from the remainder of the spent fuel. The uranium and plutonium are separated in turn in ...
The Pentagon expressed concern on Tuesday about a U.N. report indicating possible reprocessing of nuclear fuel for bombs by North Korea, and said such activity could raise tensions with Pyongyang.