In the last two or three years world attention has been focused on plutonium. Plutonium is a byproduct of the production of electricity at nuclear power plants. Nuclear power is now a real factor of progress in energy production: about 17% of all electricity produced in the world is generated by nuclear power plants, and this percentage is increasing. It is being increasingly acknowledged that nuclear power is the only way of producing electricity that is capable of providing power to mankind over a long period of time and successfully solving global ecological problems (greenhouse effect, acid rain, and so on). However, the potential danger of nuclear power cannot be ignored (production of plutonium and other highly toxic products in spent fuel).The desire worldwide to make nuclear disarmament irreversible makes this problem particularly acute. There are now two extreme points of view regarding plutonium: In one plutonium is a waste product of the nuclear power industry and in the other plutonium is a national property. This approach is based on the objective difference in the levels of technological development of the nuclear fuel cycle in specific countries and not on only the subjective separation into nuclear specialists and environmentalists. If a country has a quite well-developed technology for utilizing plutonium so as to solve the problems of nonproliferation, safety, and ecological acceptability of a fuel cycle incorporating plutonium, and economic competitiveness, then plutonium is a national resource. In the opposite case, plutonium is a source of danger on a global scale.Work on the use of plutonium in nuclear power, mastery of the uranium-plutonium fuel cycle and its technology, analysis of the role of fast and thermal reactors, and other problems has been intensively conducted for a long time at the enterprises of the Ministry of Atomic Energy of the Russian Federation. It should be noted that mankind is only now beginning to master nuclear fission reactions, and many aspects of this progress, including the fact that the possibilities have not been completely determined, still lie ahead.Plutonium Utilization in Fast Reactors. The technology for fabricating mixed uranium-plutonium pellet fuel for fast reactors has now been perfected, and industrial prototype installations "Granat" and "Paket" for production of fuel and fuel elements have been built by the Industrial Association "Mayak."Two cores loaded with weapons-grade plutonium oxide have been tested in the BR-10 experimental fast reactor. Large batches of fuel elements, made of mixed uranium-plutonium oxide fuel, and fabricated by different technologies using plutonium with different isotopic composition, have been investigated and tested in the BOR-60 reactor at the Scientific-Reasearch Institute of Nuclear Reactors. This reactor has been operating on mixed oxide fuel, based on energy plutonium of different isotopic composition, for many years. Reactor tests, followed by the investigation and chemical reprocessing of experimental fuel assembli...
621.059.54 During the last few years there has been increased interest in employing thorium in nuclear power [1]. Specialists, in particular, have shown increased interest: they have seen new areas of research in nuclear power, connected with nuclear fuel supplies, the increased safety of reactors and improvements in the ecological acceptability of nuclear power plant. Many perceive the main advantage of the thorium cycle is its considerable potential ability to resist the leakage of nuclear materials. In particular, the proposal to use fuel based on thorium and plutonium in order to utilize plutonium in reactors is connected with this.This paper mainly reflects the work carried out at the Physico-Energy Institute (FI~I). It has been constantly supported in the institute, although on a small scale. Without pretending to give an exhaustive discussion of the problem, we indicate ways in which it can be solved.Work on the thorium cycle has been carried out at the V. G. Khlopin Radium Institute, the Kurchatov Institute of the RNTs NIIARe, MIFI and VNIINM. The thorium cycle has been actively promoted at the VNIIt~F. A considerable contribution to the experimental work was made by specialists at the PO nMayak," the Siberian Chemical Factory and the BN-350.The first experiments to investigate the accumulation of 233U in thorium, placed in a uranium-graphite reactor, showed that conversion with the liberation of 233U is not simple. The isotope 232U, which is accumulated with it during decay, is the source of daughter products with high-energy ~,-radiation [2]. It turned out that only when up to one gram of 233U has been accumulated per 1 kg of thorium can one calculate the possibility of long-term operation with 233U in compartments. The concentration of 232U is approximately 5 million-I. For a concentration of 232U of greater than 10 million-l it is necessary either to remove the decay products and rapidly carry out all technological operations (directed over a period of four months), or to produce acceptable sanitary conditions with highly automated shielded equipment.Recent investigations and experiments have confirmed that in thermal reactors the accumulation of 233U up to --1 g/kg leads to a concentration of 232U of 5 million -l . It is also known that a large amount of 233U of approximately the same purity with respect to 232U has been obtained in the USA [2].During the initial period investigating the 233U-Th thermal cycle it would be a considerable simplification to use acceptably pure 233U, in order to make samples and targets and experimental fuel rods, and to introduce technological processing. It is impossible to carry out calculations in the future only on the basis of such pure 233U, since, in a power reactor (for example, the PWR) with thorium in the active region during acceptable depletion, 233U will be accumulated with a concentration of 232U of 2000-3000 million -l. The large-scale use of 233U requires a thermal cycle that operates with 233U contaminated with 232U. However, without any decline in t...
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