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Nuclear Fuel Cycle Overview
The nuclear industry spends million of dollars each year selling people on the myth that nuclear power is emissions free. The facts are different from this industry-produced public perception.
It burns a lot of fossil fuels to produce yellowcake, uranium oxide (U3O8), the conversion of it, the enrichment of it, and in producing the fuel rods for nuclear power plants.
As you read through this website and learn more about the pollution caused by the front-end phases of the nuclear fuel production, you will know that it isn't 'green'.
The production of fuel for nuclear reactors is a long and costly process. The front end includes all of the steps from claim-staking and exploration to the manufacturing of the fuel rods. We include energy production in this presentation as a way of disclosing all of the usages and actual wastes that are involved in producing each Kilowatt Hour of electricity. The steps of the process are; Exploration, Mining, Milling, Conversion, Enrichment, Fuel Fabrication, and Energy Production.
Uranium Decay Chain and its Radioactive Daughters
Uranium is the parent of the naturally occuring radionuclides and is primarily present in nature as three isotopes; U238, U235, U234. Find out more about the decay chains on our Basic Science page.
Other Waste Constituents
Besides the radioactive elements present in the waste there are several other hazardous wastes present.
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