Talk:Nuclear fuel cycle

message: (section titled added by J.Ring 03:11, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There does seem to be a huge gap in information right in the middle of the article, doesn't there? Simesa 18:08, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I took the liberty of fixing this oversight. DV8 2XL 05:53, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Terminology

message: :Refer to Talk:Nuclear reprocessing for discussion on this issue.
* This has now been done DV8 2XL 04:39, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Merging Nuclear reprocessing with Nuclear fuel cycle

message: I think the "nuclear fuel chain" is not neutral pictured!--Enr-v 10:46, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: no, it doesn't become the original material anymore once it is in the ground. A cycle that is open is a chain. --SvenAERTS (talk) 22:25, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

text: no, it is a chaîn, because uranium taken out of the ground is different from used nuclear fuel and radioactive waste. Moreover radioactive waste are mostly not returned to the ground. couldn't you draw a better scheme? --Enr-v 13:01, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV!

message: In February, 2006, a new U.S. initiative, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership was announced - it would be an international effort to reprocess fuel in a manner making proliferation infeasible, while making nuclear power available to developing countries.  Would someone like to blend GNEP into this article? Simesa 20:59, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. Hey Simesa, who was your wiki secretary last year? --DV8 2XL 21:07, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: To be honest, I didn't want to be accused of spreading this all over the place, and I wanted a second opinion as to whether this new program should be mentioned. Thanks for putting it in. Simesa 01:02, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Global Nuclear Energy Partnership]]  

message: That looks very very strange.  Isotopic, maybe... but even tehre, it owuld be better to be definite about what the usefulness of Pu that has been through several cycles will be.  At worst I suppose one would end up separating it like U235 from 239, but I can't see a mechanism for Pu239 to absorb neutrons, and then become unfissile - it is more likely to be either split, or turn into Amrericium etc and decay promptly.  I'm taking it out for the moment. By all means enlighten me. Midgley 22:20, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Isotropic signature of Pu 

message: "It is likely that the fuel will have to be able to tolerate more thermal cycles than conventional fuel, this is because if the accelerator is likely stop working on a regular basis. Each time the accelerator stops then the fuel will cool down, it is normal in many conventional power reactors to run the plant at full power for weeks or months at a time, rather than switching it on and off each day."
I can't make sense of that.  I'm sure it should not say what it does, but I'm not sure what it should say.  Midgley 22:34, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unclear passage 

message: I hope nobody minds.  I think it is clearer now, and I wanted to link it to this page to the"nuclear fuel" page. Ajnosek 03:15, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: I rewrote the introduction

message: This image at Commons would be a great addition to the article if was translated (it is an SVG so changing the text would be easy). Though I'm pretty sure I can figure out what everything means, I don't actually know French, so I'm probably not the best person to do it... --Fastfission 15:47, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Great image if you can translate French

message: The section on minor actinides was almost inconsistent and generally messy. I have tried to clarify it a bit. Also, this article currently doesn't implement the new referencing system properly. I added the ref tags but the references still aren't labelled in the reference section, and to be honest I don't know exactly how it is done. J.Ring 03:16, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleanup

message: The section on transport appears to have been taken almost verbatim from the Uranium Information Centre's issues paper #51 .  Yet it has not been referenced.  I don't know what wikipedia's stance is on the matter as I'm just a local peruser.  Just thought I'd point it out.
James
:Thanks, James, this has been fixed. Wes Hermann 19:29, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Transport references 

message: I changed a passage stating that thorium is more abundant than uranium.  These references on the
uranium and thorium resource base show that uranium is about 10x more abundant.  However, some countries do have more thorium than uranium, like India. Wes Hermann 19:27, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thorium abundance 

message: I volunteer to make pretty diagrams based on my Nuclear Fuel Cycle with products diagram that appears on the Nuclear fuel page. ChaosNil 01:01, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: i think the diagramm from nuclear waste can help you. --Enr-v 21:13, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Diagrams 

message: Why no discussion of one of the most abundant minor actinides, neptunium? NPguy 02:46, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neptunium 

message: Check out the citizendium version of this page.  They added an In-core fuel management which is not bad, not bad at all.  So I just need the wiki source of it, which I can't get quite yet, but I'll figure it out soon enough.  Then it's time for some hard core ctrl+v. 
Remember, it's not plagiarism when it has a GFDL license. -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 07:20, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: We will not be beaten!

message: In the section http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fuel_cycle#Front_end , there's a very nice series of images from the ore, over the cake all the way up to the last part of the chain: the nuclear fission material - eventually the enrichment part could be added with pics, but can we please get the numbers on it?
To get 1 ton of fission material, how many tons of cake and ore does this relate to?
If not here, where should readers be able to find it?
Thy --SvenAERTS (talk) 22:29, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you asking what the atomic abundance of 235U is in natural uranium? If so, the answer is ~.72% 235U and ~99.28% 238U (I think 236U is negligible). You can find a discussion of this in Shultis & Faw 2002. So, ore is harder to talk about because there are so many of them, but yellowcake is basically all U3O8 where the uranium matches the natural isotopic abundances. PWR fuel is UOX, or UO2, with 3% - 5% enrichment. For the sake of calculation, let's assume you want to know how many grams of fuel f at x% enrichment corresponds to y grams of yellowcake. The mass of UOX per mole is (267 g/mol)(x/100) + (270 g/mol)((100-x)/x). Because there are 100 total moles of U in UOX per x moles of 235U at x% enrichment, the mass of fuel f per mole of 235U is 267 g/mol + ((100-x)/x)270 g/mol. So, we need only determine the number of moles of 235U in y grams of yellowcake. The mass per mole of yellowcake is about 842 g/mol (that is, mostly 238U, so 238*3 + 16*8). There are 3 moles of U per mole of yellowcake, and .72 moles of 235U per 100 total moles of natural uranium. So the number of moles of 235U in y grams of yellowcake is (y grams)(1/842 mol/g)(3/1 mol U/mol yellowcake)(.72/100 mol 235U/mol U). Putting it altogether, f = -7.696e-5*(x - 9000)*y/x. Thus, you need over 7.22 tons of yellowcake to get 1 ton of 5% enriched fuel, or over 4.33 tons of yellowcake to get 1 ton of 3% enriched fuel. Of course, effluents from enrichment still have some 235U, so the yellowcake requirement is higher in reality. Could this calculation simply be included on the page? Ahnrenene (talk) 22:00, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Great explanation.  Of course, this is an encyclopedia.  In fact you can integrate it in the article only if you find the calculation somewhere in a document published by a notable person.  Maybe it can be as simple as you publishing it on a blog, explaining that you are a notable figure and then referencing to yourself. --SvenAERTS (talk) 16:02, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

text: Secondly, I was also referring to the amount of ore that needs to be excavated.  I understand there can be differences from site and origine.  But can't we bite the bullet and get at least some indicative quantities?  It will also be useful for contributors with knowledge about the other materials in the ore and the issues related to keeping that part safe as well. --SvenAERTS (talk) 16:02, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

text: I think the idea is to give rough quantitative information on how much material is present at each stage in fueling a nuclear reactor, e.g. X tons of ore needed to produce Y tons of yellowcake and Z tons of LEU fuel in order to fuel a 1000 MWt reactor for one year.  You would need to consider the enrichment tails assay, which typically ranges between 0.2% and 0.4% U-235.  Each would be a range, particularly the first one as it depends on widely varying concentrations of uranium in ore.  Other factors include the enrichment level of the fuel and the burnup achieved in the reactor. NPguy (talk) 19:26, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Support the images by quantities 

message: I don't understand why there's no mention of Russia or France in this article. France is considered an exemplar of the closed fuel cycle model, right? And Russia has the only operating commercial fast neutron reactor in the world (BN-600), right? Anyway, there are few enough nuclear nations that I think the article could stand to mention every single one without loss of scope or dilution of notability. If folks don't object, I'll make the additions. Ahnrenene (talk) 05:46, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I assume your intention is to intersperse such references throughout the article, rather than add sections on national fuel cycle approaches.  This makes sense.  France is already (indirectly) mentioned under "Europe."  I would suggest a section on international reprocessing services, pointing out that Russia, France and the UK offer such services, on different bases.  France and the UK require the return of high-level waste to the country of origin.  France will also fabricate the plutonium into MOX and return to the country of origin, a business the UK tried but failed at.  Russia will take back and reprocess spent fuel that it supplies and keep the plutonium and waste. NPguy (talk) 16:35, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  No mention of Russia or France 

message: Two topics that might deserve greater attention are the breeder fuel cycle and international approaches to the fuel cycle.
Many countries originally saw -- and a few still see -- breeding as the ultimate goal.  In principle, it can make more complete use of uranium (or thorium) fuel, and significantly reduce waste.  Thermal recycling (in light water reactors) of plutonium as MOX fuel was generally seen as a small step in that direction, since it does relatively little to achieve those benefits.  The most that would be needed here is a brief summary linking to the main article Breeder reactor.
Since the early days of the atomic age (the Acheson-Lilienthal report and Baruch Plan) people have proposed international approaches to the fuel cycle as a way of limiting the risk of spreading sensitive nuclear fuel cycle technologies (enrichment and reprocessing) that could be used to produce fissile material for weapons.  I don't think there is an article that covers this topic. NPguy (talk) 16:55, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: This is an awesome idea. I strongly approve. Ahnrenene (talk) 22:00, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Additional topics 

message: I expected more description of present industrial fission/decay chains and isotopic composition of waste. Instead, this article seems very slanted towards presently speculative technology. Please forgive my general ignorance on the subject. 108.56.200.184 (talk) 03:51, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  is this an ad for thorium processing? 

message: — Assignment last updated by Quasestio Puer (talk) 20:05, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiki Education assignment: Cold War Science