3% of the mass consists of products of fission of U-235 (also indirect products in the decay chain), considered radioactive waste or separated further for various industrial and medical uses.
1% of the mass is Pu-239 and PU-240 resulting from conversion of U-238; may either be considered a useful by-product, or as dangerous and inconvenient waste; one of the main concerns regarding nuclear proliferation is to prevent that this plutonium is used by states other than those already established as Nuclear Weapons States, to produce nuclear weapons; if the reactor has been used normally, the plutonium is reactor-grade, not weapon-grade: it contains much Pu-240 and less than 80% Pu-239, which makes it less suitable, but not impossible, to use in a weapon; if the irradiation period has been short then the plutonium is weapon-grade (more than 80%, up to 93%)
96% of the mass is the remaining uranium: most of the original U-238 and a lttle U-235, in a ratio that makes it perhaps, to a small extent, still enriched; it can be enriched again, to be reused
Reprocessing of spent commercial-reactor nuclear fuel is not permitted in the United States due to nonproliferation considerations.
The only reprocessing required, therefore, was the extraction of the plutonium (free of fission-product contamination) from the spent natural uraniumfuel.
The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, announced by the secretary of the Department of Energy, Samuel Bodman, on February 6, 2006, is a plan to form an international partnership to reprocess spent nuclearfuel in a way that renders the plutonium in it usable for nuclearfuel but not for nuclear weapons.
Thorp nuclearfuelreprocessingplant and B205 at Sellafield, note that at Sellafield (Windscale) that a series of other older plants were used in the past.
Fuel for the reactor consisted of rods of uranium metal, approximately 1 foot long by one inch in diameter, and clad in Aluminium [5].
Following the commissioning of the Magnox reprocessingplant, B204 was itself recycled to become a pre-handling plant to allow oxide fuel to be reprocessed in the new plant, and was closed in 1973.
Mixed oxide, or MOX fuel, is a blend of plutonium and natural uranium or depleted uranium which behaves similarly (though not identically) to the enriched uranium feed for which most nuclear reactors were designed.
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