The debate over the past five years on how to limit national ownership and control of nuclear fuel-cycle facilities is largely a response to the perceived risk of a growing number of countries to acquire these sensitive technologies. This prospect is seen as a challenge to the nonproliferation regime by leading nuclear weapon states and their allies, by non-weapon states seeking both to stem pr...

The nuclear fuel cycle is the series of stages that nuclear fuel materials go through in a cradle to grave framework. The Once Through Cycle (OTC) is the current fuel cycle implemented in the United States; in which an appropriate form of the fuel is irradiated through a nuclear reactor only once before it is disposed of as waste. The discharged fuel contains materials that can be suitable for ...

Electricity generated from nuclear power plants is generally associated with low emissions per kWh generated, an aspect that feeds into the wider debate surrounding nuclear power. This paper seeks to investigate how life-cycle emissions would be affected by including thorium in the nuclear fuel cycle, and in particular its inclusion in technologies that could prospectively operate open Th–U-bas...

The inevitability of switching to carbon-free energy withstand the climate change is no longer disputed by anyone today. There alternative this, and scientific community forming an appropriate understanding need for development nuclear as carbon free source. Solutions are already being discussed at level President Government Russia. In this regard, article shows that such a solution possible on...

Preliminary studies of used fuel generated in the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative have indicated that current used fuel transport casks may be insufficient for the transportation of said fuel. This work considers transport of three 5-year-cooled oxide Advanced Burner Reactor used fuel assemblies with a burn-up of 160 MWD/kg. A transport cask designed to carry these asse...

As nuclear power expands, technical, economic, political, and environmental analyses of nuclear fuel cycles by simulators increase in importance. To date, however, current tools are often fleet-based rather than discrete and restrictively licensed rather than open source. Each of these choices presents a challenge to modeling fidelity, generality, efficiency, robustness, and scientific transpar...

Over the years there have been many occasions when it was asserted that coal-fired power stations emitted more radioactivity (from NORM) than was released anywhere in the nuclear fuel cycle. While having some basis in fact the claim is generally not correct now. Today the contention regarding NORM tends to be in relation to steel and other materials released from demolished industrial facilitie...