Fuel cycle
The Nuclear Fuel Cycle - General Introduction

The fuel cycle covers all industrial operations leading from natural uranium ore (U_nat) to nuclear fuel and, after electricity production, spent fuel management operations through to final waste storage. The cycle industry can be broken down into three stages:

• the upstream part of the cycle, which deals with unirradiated uranium (natural and enriched);

• the core cycle, in which the fuel is used in a reactor for four to five years to generate electricity;

• the downstream part of the cycle, which concerns the material irradiated after passing through the reactor (figure 1).