NATS 1945 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Spent Nuclear Fuel, Nuclear Reprocessing, Nuclear Fission
31 Oct 2017
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Nuclear waste: composed of u-238 plus a few % pu, unused u-235 and fission fragments. Comparable in mass to original fuel and highly radioactive. Nuclear waste refers to the stuff that is leftover inside a fuel rod when it is finished fissioning its fissile fuel, typically u-235. Before power generation: an unused fuel rod contains 3% u-235 and 97% u-238 - In a canadian reactor, the % of u-235 would be even less, about. After power generation: first of all, you see that, of the 3% of u-(cid:1006)(cid:1007)5 fuel, there(cid:859)s still (cid:1005)% left, because the self-sustaining chain reaction tends to fizzle out before all the u-235 is fissioned. The blue bar is showing that 1% of the original 97% u-(cid:1006)(cid:1007)(cid:1012) has a(cid:271)sor(cid:271)ed n(cid:859)s and produced pu, includes both the fissile pu-239, and the radioactive pu-240. The purple bar is showing us that 3% of the fuel is now fission fragments.
