CNN has a brief report on a new initiative to produce enriched uranium for next-generation reactors by dismantling parts of the U.S. nuclear stockpile. It looks like we're actually doing swords to ploughshares!
Ella Nilsen
Inside a highly classified facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee — the same facility that enriched uranium for the first atomic bomb in the era of the Manhattan Project — workers are turning old, unexploded warheads into fuel that will power cities.
The recipe to create advanced reactor fuel involves melting weapons-grade uranium with low-enriched uranium in a crucible — a massive, metal cauldron heated to around 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit to turn its contents into molten soup.
Emerging from its furnace, a glowing orange cast filled with the hot liquid uranium is slowly lowered into a cooling chamber. The hardened finished product, which looks like black charcoal, can be safely held in-hand.
This fuel is set to power the next generation of America’s nuclear reactors — small, modular power stations that are easier and cheaper to build. They require far less upkeep and physical space than the aging fleet of large nuclear power plants.
