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Nuclear fuel process A graph comparing nucleon number against binding energy Close-up of a replica of the core of the research reactor at the Institut Laue-Langevin. Nuclear fuel refers to any substance, typically fissile material, which is used by nuclear power stations or other nuclear devices to generate energy.
In nuclear engineering, fissile material is material that can undergo nuclear fission when struck by a neutron of low energy. [1] A self-sustaining thermal chain reaction can only be achieved with fissile material. The predominant neutron energy in a system may be typified by either slow neutrons (i.e., a thermal system) or fast neutrons.
Fission product yields by mass for thermal neutron fission of U-235 and Pu-239 (the two typical of current nuclear power reactors) and U-233 (used in the thorium cycle). This page discusses each of the main elements in the mixture of fission products produced by nuclear fission of the common nuclear fuels uranium and plutonium.
The most important isotopes of these elements in spent nuclear fuel are neptunium-237, americium-241, americium-243, curium-242 through -248, and californium-249 through -252. Plutonium and the minor actinides will be responsible for the bulk of the radiotoxicity and heat generation of spent nuclear fuel in the long term (300 to 20,000 years in ...
An activation product is a material that has been made radioactive by the process of neutron activation.. Fission products and actinides produced by neutron absorption of nuclear fuel itself are normally referred to by those specific names, and activation product reserved for products of neutron capture by other materials, such as structural components of the nuclear reactor or nuclear bomb ...
A nuclear fuel pellet Nuclear fuel pellets that are ready for fuel assembly completion. The use of ordinary water makes it necessary to do a certain amount of enrichment of the uranium fuel before the necessary criticality of the reactor can be maintained. The light-water reactor uses uranium 235 as a fuel, enriched to approximately 3 percent.
129 I is one of the seven long-lived fission products that are produced in significant amounts. Its yield is 0.706% per fission of 235 U. [7] Larger proportions of other iodine isotopes such as 131 I are produced, but because these all have short half-lives, iodine in cooled spent nuclear fuel consists of about 5/6 129 I and 1/6 the only stable iodine isotope, 127 I.
In this form of decay, the original element becomes a new chemical element in a process known as nuclear transmutation and a beta particle and an electron antineutrino are emitted. An essential property of this and all nuclide decays is that the total energy of the decay product is less than that of the original nuclide. The difference between ...