Status and trends in plutonium recycling in nuclear power reactors

Already during the well-known IAEA International Fuel Cycle Evaluation Study of 1976-80,[1] the different aspects of plutonium utilization in the form of MOX fuel were discussed and followed up in the many international meetings during the last two decades. An International Symposium on MOX Fuel Cycle Technologies for Medium and Long Term Deployment, organized by the IAEA in co-operation with OECD/NEA and held in Vienna in May 1999, was a milestone which reviewed the past, present and future of Pu recycling in nuclear power reactors.[2] This paper presents major results of the Symposium in the context of present conditions of deregulated electricity market and in the future and its role in the reduction of stockpiles of separated civil and surplus ex-weapons plutonium