Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
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 comparison of the activity associated to U-233 for three different SNF types can be seen in the figure on the top right. The burnt fuels are Thorium with Reactor-Grade Plutonium (RGPu), Thorium with Weapons-Grade Plutonium (WGPu) and Mixed Oxide fuel (MOX, no thorium). For RGPu and WGPu, the initial amount of U-233 and its decay around a ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Apr. 14—It's been almost 80 years since the first atomic bomb was detonated, and scientists say there's still much to learn about how nuclear devices function as they reach the point of exploding.