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MOX or Mixed Oxide Fuel [4] as deployed in some western European and East Asian nations generally consists of depleted uranium mixed with between 4% and 7% reactor grade plutonium. Only a few Generation II and about half of Generation III reactor designs are MOX fuel compliant allowing them to use a 100% MOX fuel load with no safety concerns.
A typical 5.3% reactor-grade plutonium MOX fuel bundle, is transmutated when it itself is again burnt, a practice that is typical in French thermal reactors, to a twice-through reactor-grade plutonium, with an isotopic composition of 40.8% 239 Pu and 30.6% 240 Pu at the end of cycle (EOC).
Plutonium oxide is substantially more toxic than uranium oxide, making fuel manufacture more difficult and expensive. As plutonium isotopes absorb more neutrons than uranium fuels, reactor control systems may need modification. MOX fuel tends to run hotter because of lower thermal conductivity, which may be an issue in some reactor designs.
Beginning in 2016 Russia has been testing and is now deploying Remix Fuel in which the spent nuclear fuel is put through a process like Pyroprocessing that separates the reactor Grade Plutonium and remaining Uranium from the fission products and fuel cladding. This mixed metal is then combined with a small quantity of medium enriched Uranium ...
When used on fuel from commercial power reactors the plutonium extracted typically contains too much Pu-240 to be considered "weapons-grade" plutonium, ideal for use in a nuclear weapon. Nevertheless, highly reliable nuclear weapons can be built at all levels of technical sophistication using reactor-grade plutonium. [16]
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 ...
When the plant was up and running, using nine nuclear reactors and five reprocessing plants, it produced about 65% of the plutonium used by the US government. The Hanford Test Reactor, which was ...
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 ...