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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mark Mandel who wrote (68850)	5/27/2008 8:14:36 PM
From: Bearcatbob	Respond to of 542912

Fuel cycle - back end world-nuclear.org France chose the closed fuel cycle at the very beginning of its nuclear program, involving reprocessing used fuel so as to recover uranium and plutonium for re-use and to reduce the volume of high-level wastes for disposal. Recycling allows 30% more energy to be extracted from the original uranium and leads to a great reduction in the amount of wastes to be disposed of. Overall the closed fuel cycle cost is assessed as comparable with that for direct disposal of used fuel, and preserves a resource which may become more valuable in the future. Back end services are carried out by Areva NC. Used fuel from the French reactors and from otehr countries is sent to Areva NC's La Hague plant in Normandy for reprocessing. This treatment extracts 99.9% of the plutonium and uranium for recycling, leaving 3% of the used fuel material as high-level wastes which are vitrified and stored there for later disposal. Typical input today is 3.7% enriched used fuel from PWR and BWR reactors with burn-up to 45 GWd/t, after cooling for four years. BTW - only the most closed minded oppose use of Yuca Mountain for its intended purpose.