Glossary
Nuclear Reactors Fuel Cycle : from the Third Generation to the Fourth Generation

Fuel cycle

All industrial operations relating to nuclear fuel: ore extraction and processing, conversion, enrichment, fuel fabrication, irradiation in reactors, spent fuel processing, fissile material recycling and radioactive waste management. The word cycle is often associated with the names of the main heavy nuclei used in fuel. We thus speak of the U-Pu cycle:

• the cycle is said to be "open" when the spent fuel is not sent to a spent fuel treatment plant, but is destined for direct geological disposal after a storage phase;

• the cycle is said to be "closed" when the spent fuel is sent to a spent fuel processing plant for extraction of the fissile materials to be recycled.

The closed U-Pu cycle is associated with fast-neutron reactors, which enable...