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Environmental impact of the nuclear fuel cycle: Fate of actinides

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2011

Rodney C. Ewing ,
Wolfgang Runde  and
Thomas E. Albrecht-Schmitt
Rodney C. Ewing
Affiliation:
Department of Geological Sciences, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA; rodewing@umich.edu
Wolfgang Runde
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, NM 87545, USA; runde@lanl.gov
Thomas E. Albrecht-Schmitt
Affiliation:
Department of Civil Engineering and Geological Sciences, University of Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA; talbrec1@nd.edu
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Abstract

The resurgence of nuclear power as a strategy for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has, in parallel, revived interest in the environmental impact of actinides. Just as GHG emissions are the main environmental impact of the combustion of fossil fuels, the fate of actinides, consumed and produced by nuclear reactions, determines whether nuclear power is viewed as an environmentally “friendly” source of energy. In this article, we summarize the sources of actinides in the nuclear fuel cycle, how actinides are separated by chemical processing, the development of actinide-bearing materials, and the behavior of actinides in the environment. At each stage, actinides present a unique and complicated behavior because of the 5f electronic configurations.

Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Bulletin , Volume 35 , Issue 11: Emerging areas of actinide science , November 2010 , pp. 859 - 866
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2010

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