Fuel Cycles
Although the most common terminology is fuel cycle, some argue that the term fuel chain is more accurate, because the spent fuel is never fully recycled. Spent fuel includes fission products, which generally must be treated as waste, as well as uranium, plutonium, and other transuranic elements. Where plutonium is recycled, it is normally reused once in light water reactors, although fast reactors could lead to more complete recycling of plutonium.
Read more about this topic: Nuclear Fuel Cycle
Famous quotes containing the words fuel and/or cycles:
“It is now many years that men have resorted to the forest for fuel and the materials of the arts: the New Englander and the New Hollander, the Parisian and the Celt, the farmer and Robin Hood, Goody Blake and Harry Gill; in most parts of the world, the prince and the peasant, the scholar and the savage, equally require still a few sticks from the forest to warm them and cook their food. Neither could I do without them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The stars which shone over Babylon and the stable in Bethlehem still shine as brightly over the Empire State Building and your front yard today. They perform their cycles with the same mathematical precision, and they will continue to affect each thing on earth, including man, as long as the earth exists.”
—Linda Goodman (b. 1929)