It is building a facility in South Carolina to transform excess weapons-grade plutonium into fuel for nuclear reactors.
Japan's reactors are almost all fueled by enriched uranium, not plutonium-based fuel.
Which allows them to extract plutonium from the fuel rods used in the light water reactor, the second one that was finished in 1998.
Alan Stern expects that after the Pluto flyby in 2015 or so, there will be plenty of power left, both electricity from the plutonium generator and fuel, so New Horizons will keep on going to explore other Plutolike objects in this region of the solar system which is known as the Kuiper Belt.
The fuel, called MOX, takes uranium from spent fuel rods and mixes it with plutonium, creating a less stable fuel, one that is potentially far more dangerous in a meltdown.
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The same is true of reprocessing: you can get plutonium out of used fuel.
And the fast-breeder type of nuclear reactor in which plutonium was used as fuel is no longer economic.
Mox offers a solution to the problem: by blending the plutonium into a new fuel, the stockpiles can be reduced.
It also ups the ante for reactor accident danger, as in the case of Fukushima, because MOX fuel has plutonium in it.
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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.
The fuel in No. 3 is a blend of plutonium and reprocessed uranium, referred to as MOX (for mixed oxide) and manufactured by the French nuclear company AREVA. MOX fuel rods are also less stable than plutonium-free rods.
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They were working in Reactor No. 3 which is of particular concern because it is the only unit to use MOX fuel, which is reprocessed spent fuel mixed with plutonium.
Rokkasho has been seen as a facility that would allow Tokyo to reduce its plutonium stockpile by burning it as fuel.
When, in 1992, France (which also reprocesses commercially) returned to Japan the plutonium oxide extracted from reprocessed Japanese fuel, there was uproar.
The answer lies in its plant for reprocessing spent fuel, built partly to take used fuel from Germany and Japan (which largely paid for its construction) and partly to produce the plutonium that was once expected to be needed as fuel for fast-breeder reactors, in Britain and elsewhere.
He also said the government is pushing ahead with Rokkasho as part of a national energy policy that seeks to reduce overall plutonium stockpiles by processing them into the fuel to power reactors.
According to papers filed with the Blue Ribbon Commission, the current research involves faster and simpler processes for separating uranium and plutonium from other fission products in spent fuel and from minor elements like americium and curium.
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So a supposedly cheaper option was agreed on: to convert the reactors to use fuel that would produce far less plutonium and would not require subsequent reprocessing.
The MOX facility will blend surplus weapon-grade plutonium with depleted uranium oxide to make mixed oxide fuel for use in existing nuclear power plants.
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India has since designated some of its reactors as civilian, and open to inspection, but others still churn out spent fuel richly laden with weapons-usable plutonium.
Ironically, the accident happened only one day before a ship carrying nuclear fuel made up of mixed uranium and plutonium docked in Japan, surrounded by coast guard vessels and greeted by demonstrators.
Once the MOX fuel assemblies have been irradiated in commercial power reactors, the plutonium can no longer be readily used for nuclear weapons.
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In 1994, North Korea agreed to stop making plutonium, in return for which America and its allies would supply the country with fuel oil and build two Western-designed light-water nuclear reactors (since it is a bit harder to produce weapons-grade materials from such reactors than from the ones North Korea had been building).
KEDO, the organisation responsible for building two nuclear reactors and making interim deliveries of fuel oil in return for a freeze on the North's production of plutonium, from which nuclear bombs can be made.
The nuclear industry believes recycling the used fuel and turning it into Mox can help reduce the world's growing stockpile of plutonium, one of the most toxic substances known to humankind.
That reluctant admission sparked the latest nuclear crisis and ended a 1994 agreement with America that aimed to swap the eventual building of two western-designed nuclear reactors and interim deliveries of fuel oil for a halt to, and the eventual dismantling of, North Korea's plutonium making.
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