Talk:Nuclear fuel cycle

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[edit] Terminology

(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)

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)
I took the liberty of fixing this oversight. DV8 2XL 05:53, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merging Nuclear reprocessing with Nuclear fuel cycle

Refer to Talk:Nuclear reprocessing for discussion on this issue.
  • This has now been done DV8 2XL 04:39, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV!

I think the "nuclear fuel chain" is not neutral pictured!--Enr-v 10:46, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

  • What's your problem with it?--Fastfission 18:03, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I have altered the article to make it more NPOV, I have also added details of the three main fuel cycles which are possible.Cadmium 18:11, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
  • If material is taken out of the ground, used and returned to the ground it's still a cycle, no? --DV8 2XL 20:57, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
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)
  • If someone agrees upon a good "cycle", I'd be happy to make it/them beautiful looking. --Fastfission 18:28, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Global Nuclear Energy Partnership

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)

Done. Hey Simesa, who was your wiki secretary last year? --DV8 2XL 21:07, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
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)

[edit] Isotropic signature of Pu

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)

[edit] Unclear passage

"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)

[edit] I rewrote the introduction

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)

[edit] Great image if you can translate French

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)

[edit] Cleanup

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)

[edit] Transport references

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

Thanks, James, this has been fixed. Wes Hermann 19:29, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thorium abundance

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.

[edit] Diagrams

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)

i think the diagramm from nuclear waste can help you. --Enr-v 21:13, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Neptunium

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

[edit] We will not be beaten!

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)