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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 ...
Zheleznogorsk is also the location for the production of plutonium, electricity and district heat using graphite-moderated water-cooled reactors. The last reactor was shut down permanently in April 2010. [10] It is the location of a military reprocessing facility and for a Russian commercial nuclear-waste storage facility.
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 ...
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.
Plutonium recovered from LWR spent fuel, while not weapons grade, can be used to produce nuclear weapons at all levels of sophistication, [25] though in simple designs it may produce only a fizzle yield. [26] Weapons made with reactor-grade plutonium would require special cooling to keep them in storage and ready for use. [27]
A picture of an Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion system, known as HTRE-3 (Heat Transfer Reactor Experiment no. 3). The central EBR-1 based reactor took the place of chemical fuel combustion to heat the air. The reactor rapidly raised the temperature via an air heat exchanger and powered the dual J47 engines in a number of ground tests. [6]
The design has a breeding ratio of 1.2 to 1.3–1.35 for mixed uranium-plutonium oxide fuel and 1.45 for nitride fuel. Boron is to be used for in-reactor shielding. Thermal power is a nominal 2900 MW with an electric output of 1220 MW. Primary coolant temperature at the intermediate heat exchanger is 550 °C and at the steam generator 527 °C.