The growth prospects for nuclear power are examined: impeding and driving forces. The main problem facing nuclear power today is the management of spent fuel and wastes. Eventually, it will become economically inexpedient to store spent fuel; the natural solution is to reprocess spent fuel, extract the fi ssile isotopes, and recycle it in thermal or fast reactors. Since the fast-reactor fraction in the current system is trivial and the situation will remain the same in the near- and medium-term futures, a variant of plutonium recycling in thermal reactors with a different fuel arrangement is examined. It is shown that a heterogeneous fuel arrangement can give a 10-fold reduction of the radiation load in reprocessing enterprises. Different setups are compared in terms of the potential danger presented by spent-fuel reprocessing. The advantages of the thorium fuel cycle are examined from the standpoint of radiation and environmental safety.
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Translated from Atomnaya Énergiya, Vol. 120, No. 5, pp. 243–249, May, 2016.
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Tsibul’skii, V.F., Andrianova, E.A., Davidenko, V.D. et al. Fundamental Principles of the Formation of an Efficient Fuel-Cycle Structure for Nuclear Power. At Energy 120, 299–304 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10512-016-0134-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10512-016-0134-7