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The plant was considered part of the weapons-grade Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement signed between the United States and Russia. The reactor is part of the final step for a plutonium-burner core (a core designed to burn and, in the process, destroy, and recover energy from, plutonium) [4] The plant reached its full power ...
The US has about 90 tons of weapons-capable plutonium, while Russia has 128 tons. [1] The US declared 60 tons as excess, while Russia declared 50 tons excess. [1] The two sides agreed that each would eliminate 34 tons. [1] The agreement regulates the conversion of non-essential plutonium into mixed oxide (MOX) fuel used to produce electricity. [2]
Reactor-grade plutonium (RGPu) [1] [2] is the isotopic grade of plutonium that is found in spent nuclear fuel after the uranium-235 primary fuel that a nuclear power reactor uses has burnt up. The uranium-238 from which most of the plutonium isotopes derive by neutron capture is found along with the U-235 in the low enriched uranium fuel of ...
The longer the fuel remains in the reactor undergoing fission the more the uranium percentage decreases while the other materials increase. In effect all power reactors have been long known to be capable of operating with a mixed fissionable core containing 1% reactor grade plutonium without issues arising like those caused by the more highly ...
While "weapons-grade" plutonium is defined to contain at least 92% plutonium-239 (of the total plutonium), the United States have managed to detonate an under-20Kt device using plutonium believed to contain only about 85% plutonium-239, so called '"fuel-grade" plutonium. [126] The "reactor-grade" plutonium produced by a regular LWR burnup cycle ...
[1] [2] On the other hand, some studies warned that normalizing the global commercial use of MOX fuel and the associated expansion of nuclear reprocessing would increase, rather than reduce, the risk of nuclear proliferation, by encouraging increased separation of plutonium from spent fuel in the civil nuclear fuel cycle. [3] [4] [5]
Every year France processes 1,100 tonnes (1,100 long tons; 1,200 short tons) of spent fuel into 11 tonnes (11 long tons; 12 short tons) reactor grade plutonium (for immediate further processing into MOX fuel) and 1,045 tonnes (1,028 long tons; 1,152 short tons) of reprocessed uranium which is largely stockpiled.
But since plutonium-breeding reactors produce plutonium from U238, and thorium reactors produce fissile U233 from thorium, all breeding cycles could theoretically pose proliferation risks. [61] However U-232, which is always present in U-233 produced in breeder reactors, is a strong gamma-emitter via its daughter products, and would make weapon ...