IN this form it has been used for oil well logging, reactor start-up and instrument calibration. Then plutonium oxide can be blended with natural uranium, containing less than one per cent U-235, to make a fuel equivalent to enriched uranium. This mixed oxide can replace the three per cent U-235 fuel used in today's light water reactors. Recycling both uranium and plutonium recovered from spent fuel would reduce the amount of uranium ore concentrate required by the nuclear industry up to the end of the century by approximately 400,000 tons or about 23 per cent. This quantity of fuel material, if used in light water reactors, would generate as much electricity as some seven billion tons of coal.
Plutonium is also the principal fuel for the fast breeder reactor now being developed.
This is transformed to new plutonium, much as in conventional reactors. The breeder, however, is designed to minimize the loss of free neutrons, increasing the efficiency of the conversion process. In fact more plutonium is produced than consumed in generating electricity. Eventually the reactor creates enough ne w fissionable material to replenish its own fuel and operate another breeder of the same size. A nd the key to this advanced utilization is plutonium.