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The nuclear fuel cycle employs a full actinide recycle with two major options: One is an intermediate-size (150–600 MWe) sodium-cooled reactor with uranium-plutonium-minor-actinide-zirconium metal alloy fuel, supported by a fuel cycle based on pyrometallurgical reprocessing in facilities integrated with the reactor. The second is a medium to ...
(The Center Square) − A growing number of energy companies are looking to nuclear recycling as a way to address waste management concerns while strengthening domestic fuel supply. Ed McGinnis ...
The advanced reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel is a potential key to achieve a sustainable nuclear fuel cycle and to tackle the heavy burden of nuclear waste management. In particular, the development of such advanced reprocessing systems may save natural resources, reduce waste inventory and enhance the public acceptance of nuclear energy.
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.
With increased concerns about nuclear waste, breeding fuel cycles came under renewed interest as they can reduce actinide wastes, particularly plutonium and minor actinides. [30] Breeder reactors are designed to fission the actinide wastes as fuel and thus convert them to more fission products.
Red: uranium-238, light green: plutonium-239, black: fission products. Intensity of blue color between the tiles indicates neutron density. A traveling-wave reactor (TWR) is a proposed type of nuclear fission reactor that can convert fertile material into usable fuel through nuclear transmutation, in tandem
Fast-neutron reactors can potentially reduce the radiotoxicity of nuclear waste. Each commercial scale reactor would have an annual waste output of a little more than a ton of fission products, plus trace amounts of transuranics if the most highly radioactive components could be recycled. The remaining waste should be stored for about 500 years ...
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 established a timetable and procedure for constructing a permanent, underground repository for high-level radioactive waste by the mid-1990s, and provided for some temporary storage of waste, including spent fuel from 104 civilian nuclear reactors that produce about 19.4% of electricity there. [39]