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(section titled added by J.Ring 03:11, 25 September 2006 (UTC))
I think that the term "Nuclear fuel cycle" should include the period spent by the fuel into the reactor. At least, during my working life concluded by a period of 15 years as national manager of Nuclear fuel procurement, operating optimization, reprocessing, storage, waste management, etc., the meaning usually given to the "cycle" included that period. I'm asking if there is a general agreement on this issue, before proposing changes to the article. Paolo de Magistris,Rome, Italy. -- 62.211.198.188 13:25, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I think the "nuclear fuel chain" is not neutral pictured!-- Enr-v 10:46, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)
"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)
Another: "but the ratio of fission to simple activation (ng reactions) changes in favour of fission as the neutron energy increases." I don't understand (ng reactions). COntext or explanation needs adding. Midgley 13:50, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)
Also, one of my long-term goals is to transform all of the flowcharts here to SVG, with little graphics, and make them all vertically oriented so they fit on the page... -- Fastfission 15:49, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
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)
The section on transport appears to have been taken almost verbatim from the Uranium Information Centre's issues paper #51 [1]. 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
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)
Uh....
http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/ele090.html
http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/ele092.html
Thorium is absolutely more abundant than Uranium, 9.6 vs 2.7, as referenced above. I think you might be confusing abundance with resources. They are not the same thing at all.
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)
Why no discussion of one of the most abundant minor actinides, neptunium? NPguy 02:46, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
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)
I am going to move the Fuel cycles section to the bottom of the page. It is too details for the layman and not useful shown before all other sections. I am adding a new introductory section modeled after the one I've just added to the Chinese version of this article. Fred Hsu ( talk) 21:58, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
I am back with new proposals to finish the newly created Basic Concepts section. First, I think the newly rewritten version is excellent. But I am not completely satisfied with some relevant information you chopped off:
I think this will complete the high-level picture of the complete fuel cycle. Thanks. Fred Hsu ( talk) 02:08, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
What I think:
Humbly yours. 04:06, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
I see. Thanks for explaining. Now I see why you refrained from writing about these points. Oh well. I am going to stop harassing you now :) Fred Hsu ( talk) 02:46, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
I briefly skimmed through that PDF. Wow. There is a lot of information in that document. I stand corrected on all three issues listed above. Maybe one day when I am motivated again I will come back and enhance it. There is definitely enough information from that document alone to enrich this new section on topics I want to add back, not to mention the 2003 document this one *updates*. Take this one for instance:
Reprocessing and recycle:
A decision to adopt a closed fuel cycle, with reprocessing SNF and recycling the fissile plutonium and uranium into reactors for power and transmutation of long-lived actinides, depends on three factors (1) economics, (2) impact on waste management, and (3) nonproliferation considerations.
Till then. Fred Hsu ( talk) 03:08, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
It should be called a nuclear fuel chain. Calling it a cycle implies that you can get back to where you started, but you can't. Once you fission uranium, you can't get the original uranium back and you can't get rid of the waste fission products. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jpritikin ( talk • contribs) 06:40, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
I undid it because it looks like you posted the same comment on a blog and tried to cite that as an independent source. Wikipedia requires reliable sources, and this blog clearly does not qualify. In general, blogs do not qualify, but there are exceptions.
My basic point is that no one cares if the "nuclear fuel cycle" is accurately described as a "cycle." It has become a term of art. Even when there is no attempt to recycle spent fuel, it's called a "once through fuel cycle."
But if you can find a serious, reliable source that makes this argument, so that it meets Wikipedia content standards, I will drop my objections. NPguy ( talk) 02:18, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
Ultimately, it's a cycle, beginning and ending with alpha particles. The part of the cycle we exploit is a decaying chain, but the totality is a cycle. htom ( talk) 13:09, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
The impression I'm getting is that the terminology is a matter of controversy, which, under certain conditions, would itself be worthy of mention in the article. As in, the industry uses "fuel cycle" without a second thought because it's always been called that and the term is perfectly functional; while opponents wish to call it a "fuel chain" because laymen will construe "cycle" as implying renewability. If this is indeed the situation, it seems obvious to me that the term "fuel cycle" ought to be used throughout the body of the article, with a short section on controversy added to explain that Helen Caldicott, a notable opponent of civilian nuclear power, prefers the term "fuel chain". Perhaps this is naive, but I expect that she'd even be willing to publish something short but citation-worthy if a third party simply e-mailed her and explained it was needed in order to include discussion of the controversy in a Wikipedia article. I would do all of these things and the edit myself, but I'm too new to the Wikipedia to delve into controversy. Thanks Ahnrenene ( talk) 05:34, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
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)
Correct--
SvenAERTS (
talk) 16:02, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 January 2024 and 3 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Quasestio Puer ( article contribs).
— Assignment last updated by Quasestio Puer ( talk) 20:05, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Nuclear fuel cycle article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
This
level-5 vital article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
(section titled added by J.Ring 03:11, 25 September 2006 (UTC))
I think that the term "Nuclear fuel cycle" should include the period spent by the fuel into the reactor. At least, during my working life concluded by a period of 15 years as national manager of Nuclear fuel procurement, operating optimization, reprocessing, storage, waste management, etc., the meaning usually given to the "cycle" included that period. I'm asking if there is a general agreement on this issue, before proposing changes to the article. Paolo de Magistris,Rome, Italy. -- 62.211.198.188 13:25, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I think the "nuclear fuel chain" is not neutral pictured!-- Enr-v 10:46, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)
"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)
Another: "but the ratio of fission to simple activation (ng reactions) changes in favour of fission as the neutron energy increases." I don't understand (ng reactions). COntext or explanation needs adding. Midgley 13:50, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)
Also, one of my long-term goals is to transform all of the flowcharts here to SVG, with little graphics, and make them all vertically oriented so they fit on the page... -- Fastfission 15:49, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
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)
The section on transport appears to have been taken almost verbatim from the Uranium Information Centre's issues paper #51 [1]. 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
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)
Uh....
http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/ele090.html
http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/ele092.html
Thorium is absolutely more abundant than Uranium, 9.6 vs 2.7, as referenced above. I think you might be confusing abundance with resources. They are not the same thing at all.
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)
Why no discussion of one of the most abundant minor actinides, neptunium? NPguy 02:46, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
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)
I am going to move the Fuel cycles section to the bottom of the page. It is too details for the layman and not useful shown before all other sections. I am adding a new introductory section modeled after the one I've just added to the Chinese version of this article. Fred Hsu ( talk) 21:58, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
I am back with new proposals to finish the newly created Basic Concepts section. First, I think the newly rewritten version is excellent. But I am not completely satisfied with some relevant information you chopped off:
I think this will complete the high-level picture of the complete fuel cycle. Thanks. Fred Hsu ( talk) 02:08, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
What I think:
Humbly yours. 04:06, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
I see. Thanks for explaining. Now I see why you refrained from writing about these points. Oh well. I am going to stop harassing you now :) Fred Hsu ( talk) 02:46, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
I briefly skimmed through that PDF. Wow. There is a lot of information in that document. I stand corrected on all three issues listed above. Maybe one day when I am motivated again I will come back and enhance it. There is definitely enough information from that document alone to enrich this new section on topics I want to add back, not to mention the 2003 document this one *updates*. Take this one for instance:
Reprocessing and recycle:
A decision to adopt a closed fuel cycle, with reprocessing SNF and recycling the fissile plutonium and uranium into reactors for power and transmutation of long-lived actinides, depends on three factors (1) economics, (2) impact on waste management, and (3) nonproliferation considerations.
Till then. Fred Hsu ( talk) 03:08, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
It should be called a nuclear fuel chain. Calling it a cycle implies that you can get back to where you started, but you can't. Once you fission uranium, you can't get the original uranium back and you can't get rid of the waste fission products. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jpritikin ( talk • contribs) 06:40, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
I undid it because it looks like you posted the same comment on a blog and tried to cite that as an independent source. Wikipedia requires reliable sources, and this blog clearly does not qualify. In general, blogs do not qualify, but there are exceptions.
My basic point is that no one cares if the "nuclear fuel cycle" is accurately described as a "cycle." It has become a term of art. Even when there is no attempt to recycle spent fuel, it's called a "once through fuel cycle."
But if you can find a serious, reliable source that makes this argument, so that it meets Wikipedia content standards, I will drop my objections. NPguy ( talk) 02:18, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
Ultimately, it's a cycle, beginning and ending with alpha particles. The part of the cycle we exploit is a decaying chain, but the totality is a cycle. htom ( talk) 13:09, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
The impression I'm getting is that the terminology is a matter of controversy, which, under certain conditions, would itself be worthy of mention in the article. As in, the industry uses "fuel cycle" without a second thought because it's always been called that and the term is perfectly functional; while opponents wish to call it a "fuel chain" because laymen will construe "cycle" as implying renewability. If this is indeed the situation, it seems obvious to me that the term "fuel cycle" ought to be used throughout the body of the article, with a short section on controversy added to explain that Helen Caldicott, a notable opponent of civilian nuclear power, prefers the term "fuel chain". Perhaps this is naive, but I expect that she'd even be willing to publish something short but citation-worthy if a third party simply e-mailed her and explained it was needed in order to include discussion of the controversy in a Wikipedia article. I would do all of these things and the edit myself, but I'm too new to the Wikipedia to delve into controversy. Thanks Ahnrenene ( talk) 05:34, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
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)
Correct--
SvenAERTS (
talk) 16:02, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 January 2024 and 3 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Quasestio Puer ( article contribs).
— Assignment last updated by Quasestio Puer ( talk) 20:05, 11 April 2024 (UTC)