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Spent nuclear fuel, occasionally called used nuclear fuel, is nuclear fuel that has been irradiated in a nuclear reactor (usually at a nuclear power plant). It is no longer useful in sustaining a nuclear reaction in an ordinary thermal reactor and, depending on its point along the nuclear fuel cycle , it will have different isotopic ...
Nuclear fuel process A graph comparing nucleon number against binding energy Close-up of a replica of the core of the research reactor at the Institut Laue-Langevin. Nuclear fuel refers to any substance, typically fissile material, which is used by nuclear power stations or other nuclear devices to generate energy.
The lifecycle of fuel in the present US system. If put in one place the total inventory of spent nuclear fuel generated by the commercial fleet of power stations in the United States, would stand 7.6 metres (25 ft) tall and be 91 metres (300 ft) on a side, approximately the footprint of one American football field.
The nuclear fuel cycle begins when uranium is mined, enriched, and manufactured into nuclear fuel (1), which is delivered to a nuclear power plant. After use, the spent fuel is delivered to a reprocessing plant (2) or to a final repository (3).
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.
Vogtle is important because government officials and some utilities are again looking to nuclear power to alleviate climate change by generating electricity without burning natural gas, coal and ...
The economics of nuclear power plants is a controversial subject, and multibillion-dollar investments ride on the choice of an energy source. Nuclear power stations typically have high capital costs, but low direct fuel costs, with the costs of fuel extraction, processing, use and spent fuel storage internalized costs. [37]
A robot has, for the first time since the 2011 meltdown, retrieved a piece of radioactive fuel from the tsunami-ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.. The remote-controlled robot, named ...