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Nuclear fuel is material used in nuclear power stations to produce heat to power turbines. Heat is created when nuclear fuel undergoes nuclear fission. Most nuclear fuels contain heavy fissile actinide elements that are capable of undergoing and sustaining nuclear fission. The three most relevant fissile isotopes are uranium-233, uranium-235 and plutonium-239. When the unstable nuclei of these atoms are hit by a slow-moving neutron, they frequently split, creating two daughter nuclei and two or three more neutrons.
A nuclear reactor is a device used to initiate and control a fission nuclear chain reaction or nuclear fusion reactions. Nuclear reactors are used at nuclear power plants for electricity generation and in nuclear marine propulsion. Heat from nuclear fission is passed to a working fluid (water or gas), which in turn runs through steam turbines. These either drive a ship's propellers or turn electrical generators' shafts. Nuclear generated steam in principle can be used for industrial process heat or for district heating.
Mixed oxide fuel, commonly referred to as MOX fuel, is nuclear fuel that contains more than one oxide of fissile material, usually consisting of plutonium blended with natural uranium, reprocessed uranium, or depleted uranium. MOX fuel is an alternative to the low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel used in the light-water reactors that predominate nuclear power generation. For example, a mixture of 7% plutonium and 93% natural uranium reacts similarly, although not identically, to LEU fuel (3 to 5% uranium-235).
The safe and economic operation of nuclear power plants (NPPs) requires that the behaviour and performance of the fuel can be calculated reliably over its expected lifetime. This requires highly developed codes that treat the nuclear fuel in a general mann ...
The growth of the porosity in high-burnup fuel is of particular interest when considering the effect of fission gas retention within the high-burnup structure (HBS). A mechanistic model of porosity growth under annealing conditions for light water reactor ...
Atomic Energy Society of Japan2008
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The behaviour of fission gas in high burnup fuel during steady-state and transient conditions is of special interest for safety reasons. Despite this, mechanistic models that reflect the fission gas transport processes and reliably predict the evolution of ...