Uranium in the NFC

FIGURE 1.9 An overview of a schematic generic nuclear fuel cycle. (Adapted from International Atomic Energy Agency, Nuclear fuel cycle information system, A directory of nuclear fuel cycle facilities, 2009 Edition IAEA TECDCXl 1613, IAEA, Vienna, Austria. With permission.) 

FIG U RE 1.10 The main stages of uranium processing carried out at a generic UCF. 

It should be noted that there are many variations of the fuel cycle, each consisting of several stages, that we shall not go into. The front end of the cycle starts with an exploration for uranium deposits (see Chapter 2 for details) and continues with mining operations to retrieve the uranium-rich minerals and with milling of the material to augment the fraction with uranium, usually close to the mine site. 

After the nnclear fnel is fabricated, placed in a reactor and irradiated the fuel elements become highly radioactive (now called spent fuel) aud their ranoval or replacement reqnires special iffotective means. These spent fuel elements need to be placed in cooling ponds until the intensity of radiation abates and then the fuel is either moved into permanent storage or transported to a reprocessing plant EinaUy, the nsed fnel and radioactive products need to be separated according to their chani-cal and physical properties and then sent to a waste disposal site or transmuted into harmless forms. 

The material balance in the NFC for a generic case can be sununarized, as detailed later, based on seminar material from the European Nuclear Euel Management. Starting with 20,000 tons of ore that contains 1% uranium that after milling is reduced to 230 tons of uranium ore conceutrates (of which 195 tons consist of uranium). This is converted to 288 tons of UF and after enrichment one part is enriched to 4% 2 U (35 tons UFg containing 24 tons uranium) and the rest (254 tons UFg containing 171 tons uranium) is in the tails. The enriched uranium is converted into 27 tons of UO2 from which electricity (7000 million kWh) can be produced in the reactor. The spent fuel will contain 23 tons of uranium (-0.8% U), -240 kg of plutonium, -720 kg of fission products, and some trans-uranium elements. 

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