The magnitude of humanity’s energy needs requires that we embrace a multitude of various energy sources and applications. For a variety of reasons, nuclear energy must be a major portion of the distribution, at least one-third. The often-cited strategic hurdle to this approach is nuclear waste disposal. Present strategies concerning disposal of nuclear waste need to be changed if the world is t...

Due to limited sources of natural uranium, Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) has sought thorium (Th) as an alternative source of nuclear fuel. India has one of the largest deposits of natural Th in the form of monazite in Kerala. The currently known Indian Th reserves amount to 155,000 GWe-yr of electrical energy and can meet the energy requirements during the next century and beyond. Thorium-2...

The production of nuclear fuel used in the research reactor at Instituto de Pesquisas Energéticas e Nucleares (IPEN/CNEN-SP) requires a series of chemical and metallurgical processes. The quality of the end product depends on the control over all the stages of the manufacturing process and over the quality of raw materials employed. In fact, spectrometric methods are increasingly used as quanti...

The principle drawbacks of any kind of solid nuclear fuel are listed and briefly analysed in the first part of the paper. On the basis of this analysis, the liquid fuel concept and its benefits are introduced and briefly described in the following parts of the paper allowing to develop new reactor systems for nuclear incineration of spent fuel from conventional reactors and a new clean source o...

A 2-D model for the corrosion of spent nuclear fuel inside a failed nuclear waste container has been modified to determine the influence of various redox processes occurring within fractures in the fuel. The corrosion process is driven by reaction of the fuel with the dominant α radiolysis product, H2O2. A number of reactions are shown to moderate or suppress the corrosion rate, including H2O2 ...

It is desirable to devise a solution for the fuel cycle back-end that is acceptable from the society as well as technologically and economically viable. While satisfactory technological solutions exist, they only address portions of the overall problem. A fully integrated effective solution satisfying all public concerns has yet to be developed. In particular, we aim to establish a comprehensiv...

Measuring resource efficiency can be achieved using different methods, of which primary energy demand is commonly used. The primary energy factor (PEF) is a figure describing how much energy from primary resources is being used per unit of energy delivered. The PEF for nuclear power is typically 3, which refers to thermal energy released from fission in relation to electricity generated. Fuel l...