Nonproliferation fuel cycles

Third, excesses beget excesses. While many nuclear advocates responded to the exaggerated importance placed on the fuel cycle by the Carter policy by rejecting ary relationship of nuclear power to proliferation, this view is equally unsupportable. Although less likely, the fuel cycle - with or without recycle -can be a source of nuclear material for weapons. This is why safeguards and many other features of the nonproliferation regime were developed. 

If nonproliferation considerations have not led to official opposition to nuclear power, their effect on fuel cycle policy has been profound. Although, its rhetoric and many of its implementating actions have been more restrained, the Clinton Administration has, in principle, adopted the Carter policy of opposition to reprocessing and plutonium recycle, hr at least one important area, however, it has inexplicably out-Cartered earlier policy by terminating work on proliferation-resistant firel cycles that involve recycle of still highly radioactive plutonium. 

For full public acceptance of nuclear power, a number of issues must be addressed, including waste disposal, reactor safety, economics, and nonproliferation. All of these issues depend on the fuel cycle that is used, but for any fuel cycle a geological repository will be needed for high-level waste storage. What will differ are the nature, hazard, half-life, and volume of the waste. 

As early as 1951, first nuclear electricity was produced at the experimental fast reactor EBR-I, but both this reactor and the E. Fermi Plant suffered accidents in the 1960s, and in the 1980s the USA stopped the construction of fast reactors and the work on a closed fuel cycle for nonproliferation reasons. 

Technical and political palliatives do restrain but have failed to prevent the propagation of nuclear weapons. If consistently implemented for nuclear reactors and, espedaUy, for the fuel cycle, the concept of natural safety can technologically strengthen the nonproliferation regime under the conditions of a large-scale nuclear power industry in the twenty-first century (Adamov et al. 1995). 

The nonproliferation regime may be technologically supported in the fuel cycle of a fast reactor with full fuel reproduction in the core owing to the following ... 

Nuclear power for civil use is well established in India. Its civil nuclear strategy has been directed toward complete independence in the nuclear fuel cycle, necessary because it is excluded from the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) due to it acquiring nuclear weapons capability after 1970. 

Cacuci, D. G. 2010. Handbook of Nuclear Engineering. New York Springer. This four-volume e-book provides thorough coverage of all areas of nuclear engineering. Volume 1 focuses on the fundamentals of nuclear engineering volumes 2, 3, and 4 discuss nuclear reactor analysis, power reactors, experimental reactors, and the nuclear fuel cycle, respectively. Other topics include radioactive waste disposal, safeguards, and nuclear nonproliferation. 

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