What is fuel for nuclear plants and where does it come from?

Answer 1

Fuel for a nuclear reactor is either mined and processed or syntheticaly produced using an operating nuclear reactor. Uranium is the most common nuclear fuel, and the largest supplier of uranium in the world is Canada, which provides well over half of the uranium on the market. Another fuel, plutonium, can be produced in a nuclear reactor.

The fuel most commonly found in a nuclear reactor is enriched uranium. Enriched uranium is uranium that has had the U-235 content increased above what it is in the naturally occurring metal. Most uranium that comes out of the ground is U-238, and less than 1% of the uranium is U-235. We have to apply a physical process to increase the percentage of U-235 in the uranium, and we use mechanical separation to obtain uranium with a higher percentage of the U-235. This uranium is said to be enriched, and the process is said to be enrichment.

This means that the uranium that is mined and processed to recover the metal will have to go through a costly and technically challenging process to increase the amount of the U-235 isotope that we need.

We can generate plutonium by exposing U-238 to neutrons in a critical (operating) nuclear reactor, thus "making" fissionable material for fuel (or weapons). We know that we can make Pu-239 by exposing U-238 to neutron flux. The U-238 will absorb a neutron, then become U-239, which will beta decay to neptunium which will beta decay to plutonium, our fuel.

Answer 2

The fuel most widely used by nuclear plants for nuclear fission is uranium. Most U.S. uranium is mined in the Western United States.

Answer 3

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