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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.
The first reprocessing approach is based on the PUREX (Plutonium Uranium Reduction EXtraction) process, which is the standard and mature technology applied worldwide to recover uranium and plutonium from spent nuclear fuel at industrial scale. Following the dissolution of the spent fuel in nitric acid and the removal of uranium and plutonium ...
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 ...
High-level waste is the highly radioactive waste material resulting from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, including liquid waste produced directly in reprocessing and any solid material derived from such liquid waste that contains fission products in sufficient concentrations; and other highly radioactive material that is determined, consistent with existing law, to require permanent ...
The nuclear fuel cycle, also called nuclear fuel chain, is the progression of nuclear fuel through a series of differing stages. It consists of steps in the front end , which are the preparation of the fuel, steps in the service period in which the fuel is used during reactor operation, and steps in the back end , which are necessary to safely ...
The fuel's liquid phase can be pyroprocessed to separate fission products from fuels. This may have advantages over conventional reprocessing. Fuel rod fabrication is replaced with salt synthesis. Some designs are compatible with fast neutrons, which can "burn" transuranic elements such as 240 Pu, 241 Pu (reactor grade plutonium) from LWRs.
Nuclear power has a significant history in Pennsylvania, beginning in 1954 with the establishment of the first commercial, peace-time plant in America, the Shippingport Atomic Power Station. Since the construction of the Shippingport plant, 8 new nuclear plants have been constructed, 5 of which having already been decommissioned.
Belgian spent nuclear fuel was initially sent for reprocessing in France. In 1993, reprocessing was suspended following a resolution of the Belgian parliament; [51] spent fuel is since being stored on the sites of the nuclear power plants. The deep disposal of high-level radioactive waste (HLW) has been studied in Belgium for more than 30 years.