burn-up

We can also burn spent fuel rods from conventional reactors as fuel, and we achieve far higher burn-up than you achieve.

The Next Smart Thing 2011

The higher the burn-up, the less fissile plutonium remains in the used fuel.

Mixed oxide fuel (MOX) 2009

The VHTR has potential for high burn-up (150-200 GWd/t), completely passive safety, low operation and maintenance costs, and modular construction.

Generation IV nuclear reactors 2009

Instead, plutonium production takes place in the core, where burn-up is high and the proportion of plutonium isotopes other than Pu-239 remains high.

Generation IV nuclear reactors 2009

Compared with solid-fuelled reactors, MSR systems have lower fissile inventories, no radiation damage constraint on fuel burn-up, no spent nuclear fuel, no requirement to fabricate and handle solid fuel, and a homogeneous isotopic composition of fuel in the reactor.

Generation IV nuclear reactors 2009

An issue in operating reactors and hence specifying the fuel for them is fuel burn-up.

Nuclear fuel cycle 2009

Operation: 45,000 MWday/t (45 GWd/t) burn-up, 33% thermal efficiency.

Nuclear fuel cycle 2009

This is complicated by the presence of impurities and two new isotopes in particular: U-232 and U-236, formed by or following neutron capture in the reactor, and increase with higher burn-up levels.

Uranium enrichment 2009

Hitherto a limiting factor has been the physical robustness of fuel assemblies, and hence burn-up levels of about 40 GWd/t have required only around 4% enrichment.

Nuclear fuel cycle 2009

Almost 25 tonnes of thorium was used in fuel for the reactor, and this achieved 170,000 MWd/t burn-up.

Thorium 2009