Nuclear fuel bank
Reserve of low enriched uranium reactor fuel / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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A nuclear fuel bank is reserve of low enriched uranium (LEU) for countries that need a backup source of LEU to fuel their nuclear reactors. Countries that do have enrichment technology would donate enriched fuel to a "bank", from which countries not possessing enrichment technology would obtain fuel for their power reactors.
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The specific problem is: Updating and trimming older content given that one of the proposals is now open, update of events since August 2017. (July 2019) |
LEU banks are meant to be nuclear fuel providers "in the event of unforeseen, non-commercial disruption" to the supplies, and are regarded an important international effort to "prevent nuclear proliferation and dissuading countries from building uranium enrichment facilities by guaranteeing access to LEU for fuel use should other sources fail."[1]
The concept of providing an assured supply of nuclear fuel, and thus avoiding the need for countries to build indigenous nuclear fuel production capabilities, has long been proposed as a way to curb the proliferation of nuclear weapons and, eventually, eliminate them altogether.[2] Austria,[3] Russia,[4] the European Union,[5] the United States,[6] and others have supported various concepts of an international fuel bank. Many non-nuclear-weapon states have been reluctant to embrace any of these proposals for varying reasons.