espite long-standing public concern about the safety of nuclear energy, more and more people are realizing that it may be the most environmentally friendly way to generate large amounts of electricity. Several nations, including Brazil, China, Egypt, Finland, India, Japan, Pakistan, Russia, South Korea and Vietnam, are building or planning nuclear plants. But this global trend has not as yet ex...

Ethics requires good science. Many scientists, government leaders, and industry representatives support tripling of global-nuclear-energy capacity on the grounds that nuclear fission is "carbon free" and "releases no greenhouse gases." However, such claims are scientifically questionable (and thus likely to lead to ethically questionable energy choices) for at least 3 reasons. (i) They rely on ...

In Japan, since plutonium is to be used as a nuclear fuel material under the nuclear energy policy, the objective of partitioning and transmutation (P&T) is oriented to removal and transmutation of mainly MA and long-lived fission products. Under the OMEGA (option making of extra gain from actinides and fission products transmutation) programme, on the basis of the double-strata fuel cycle conc...

The instant release fraction of a spent nuclear fuel is a matter of concern in the performance assessment of a deep geological repository since it increases the radiological risk. Corrosion studies of two different spent nuclear fuels were performed using bicarbonate water under oxidizing conditions to study their instant release fraction. From each fuel, cladded segments and powder samples obt...

Almost all major nuclear operations produce residues containing radioactive materials; in reactor operations, for example, the fission products, new elements (such as plutonium) produced by neutron irradiation and the unfissioned nuclear fuel are all radioactive. Some of this material can be put to further use: useful radioisotopes, for instance, can be extracted from the fission products and p...

A new detection technique, originally thought for the detection of explosives in cargo containers, is presented in this paper for the particular application of isotopic detection of nuclear materials in a Nuclear Energy System (NES). This technique is called Nuclear Resonance Fluorescence (NRF) and the reference fuel scheme to which it is applied is the Sodium Fast Reactor (SFR). The objective ...

Pursuant to Article 1 of the Convention signed in Paris on 14th December 1960, and which came into force on 30th September 1961, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shall promote policies designed: − to achieve the highest sustainable economic growth and employment and a rising standard of living in Member countries, while maintaining financial stability, and thus t...

At the present stage of development no single energy resource or technology constitutes a panacea toaddress all issues. Therefore, it is necessary that all low-carbon and non-carbon emitting resources become anintegral part of an energy mix – as diversified as possible – to ensure energy security to the world during thepresent century. Available sources are low carbon fossil fuels, ...