The icky sludge and saltcake generated from making weapons is nothing like fuel from a power reactor.
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It also expelled the weapons inspectors who were monitoring its plutonium-laden spent fuel rods and a reactor capable of producing more that can be reprocessed into fissile material for nuclear bombs.
The idea was for Iran to ship 1, 200kg of its low-enriched uranium overseas to produce fuel for a research reactor, thus leaving the country for a while with too small a stockpile with which to make a bomb.
U.S. and United Nations officials have documented what they describe as serious limitations in Iran's ability to quickly and efficiently produce the enriched uranium required to either fuel a nuclear power reactor or to build an atomic weapon.
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Rather than sit down with the six, it may be hoping to revive talks about a separate proposal for Russia, France, America and the IAEA to help it find replacement 20%-enriched fuel for a research reactor in Tehran that supplies medical isotopes.
The company, Air Fuel Syndication, then uses the carbon dioxide and hydrogen to produce methanol which in turn is passed through a gasoline fuel reactor, creating petrol.
That could be a problem if the time comes to transport spent fuel from reactor sites to a central storage facility.
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Will Campbell, director of JGC Engineering, who traces the family-owned firm back six generations to a blacksmith's forge, is building a computerised crane for a German company that needs it to remove nuclear-fuel rods from a defunct Lithuanian reactor.
Salehi also said that Iran is building fuel plates to operate a nuclear reactor.
Subsequently, France would convert the uranium into fuel rods for use in a reactor in Tehran that produces medical isotopes.
The enormous heat generated by the radioactive fuel in the reactor core needs a constant flow of cold water.
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The fuel cannot melt down in a thorium reactor because it is already molten, and reactions slow down as it cools.
During a routine run in 1986 a few days after the Chernobyl fire, one of the pebbles became lodged in a pipe feeding the fuel to the reactor.
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The Islamic Republic turned down a deal put together last year by America, Russia, France and the IAEA that would have bought time for talks by taking much of Iran's low-enriched (3.5%) uranium out of the country, returning it later as higher-enriched (about 20%) rods to provide new fuel for a small Tehran-based research reactor.
Thermoelectric coupling uses heat from the decay of a radioactive fuel (as opposed to the full-scale nuclear fission which powers a reactor on Earth) as its energy source.
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The Japanese government said Monday that the fuel rods in one reactor have fused together in a partial meltdown.
The irradiated fuel can then be unloaded from the reactor, the U-233 separated from the thorium, and fed back into another reactor as part of a closed fuel cycle.
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As part of the deal to build the new power plants, America promised to supply 500, 000 tonnes of fuel oil a year to North Korea until the first reactor was completed, in around 2003.
The complex offers Pyongyang two ways of making nuclear bombs - a uranium enrichment facility, and a nuclear reactor, from which the spent fuel can be turned into plutonium.
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It quoted a member of Iran's negotiating team as saying: "Iran is interested in buying fuel for the Tehran research reactor within the framework of a clear proposal... we are waiting for the other party's constructive and trust-building response".
Among other things, his team has designed a nuclear reactor that would use nuclear waste as its fuel.
"I just can't stand this mess, " he remarked early this year when the state-owned Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corp. failed to prevent a serious accident at a nuclear waste-processing plant near Tokyo.
Yes I have seen the advocacy for Liquid Fluoride Thorium reactors and there are some apparent tantalizing advantages over current Uranium reactor designs like ability to burn plutonium as a starter fuel, less production of transuranics, higher fuel burn efficiencies, etc.
In exchange, the EU diplomats publicly assured the Iranians that, their countries would reward improved behavior (such as Tehran's agreement not to reprocess nuclear reactor fuel and its signing up to - and implementing - a new, more intrusive inspection accord with the IAEA) with still more Western nuclear technology.
Seoul has been pushing for a green light to enrich uranium and reprocess spent nuclear-reactor fuel to develop its nuclear power industry, but Washington has been opposed out of concern it could spur nuclear weapons proliferation.
The key risk of storing spent fuel at reactor sites is radiation exposure from spent fuel that has caught fire when it is stored in a pool.
Under the proposal, Iran would get the fuel it needs for its research reactor in Tehran, but this would not be sufficiently enriched to make a bomb.
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