Abstract
Before 1975 there were coherent and widely accepted plans for a nuclear fuel cycle in the world which for brevity I will call Fermi’s dream. One starts from uranium ore, processing it to form uranium metal, burning the uranium 235 in an electric power producing reactor, reprocessing the fuel to separate the uranium 235 and plutonium 239 for use in subsequent reactors. If the reactor is a fast neutron reactor, other transuranic elements can also be broken up and destroyed by fission. All that would be left for subsequent waste disposal would be fission products themselves, almost all with half lives of 30 years or less. The fast neutron reactor of preference was cooled with liquid sodium. With this it was envisaged that all the energy in uranium, including both isotopes could be unlocked.
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Wilson, R. (1997). The Nuclear Fuel Cycle and other Features of Nuclear Power: Reaching a Public Consensus. In: Kursunoglu, B.N., Mintz, S.L., Perlmutter, A. (eds) Technology for Global Economic and Environmental Survival and Prosperity. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-5961-0_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-5961-0_3
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