Talk:Nuclear reprocessing

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Nuclear reprocessing article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1: 365 days

Energy Mid‑importance

	Energy portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Energy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Energy on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.EnergyWikipedia:WikiProject EnergyTemplate:WikiProject Energyenergy articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Environment High‑importance

	Environment portal This environment-related article is part of the WikiProject Environment to improve Wikipedia's coverage of the environment. The aim is to write neutral and well-referenced articles on environment-related topics, as well as to ensure that environment articles are properly categorized. Read Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ and leave any messages at the project talk page.EnvironmentWikipedia:WikiProject EnvironmentTemplate:WikiProject EnvironmentEnvironment articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

86.2.102.238

I think even though it's not really worth it we are saving the world's uranium supply

Chinese developments require updating

The World Nuclear Association has published information about China's reprocessing capacity that should be better reflected in this article, in my opinion. Here's the source. The article is well referenced so I'll let an editor with a stronger interest in this subject take it from here, back to the original sources. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/china-nuclear-fuel-cycle.aspx --Danimations (talk) 03:48, 15 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Plutonium etc

My recent edit has been reverted by Garzfoth (fascinating user page) with the edit summary Reverted good faith edits by Andrewa (talk): Plutonium is a fission product; fission products are already mentioned; replacing the term uranium with the term fuel in this location is problematic in multiple ways.

But please note that

Plutonium is not a fission product
Plutonium is recovered by reprocessing and used as a nuclear fuel in MOX fuel and more recently in remix fuel

So IMO the reverted article is now inaccurate and misleading. Uranium is not the only nuclear fuel recovered by reprocessing.

And the edit summary is just plain in error. Which perhaps tells us why the article is now also in error.

Am I missing something? I note that the edit summary says replacing the term uranium with the term fuel in this location is problematic in multiple ways. I think that these multiple ways should be listed and discussed.

Meantime I have tagged the relevant claim. Andrewa (talk) 09:34, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Andrewa: Replace it with actinides, and both sides should be satisfied. This includes uranium, plutonium, and the so-called minor actinides (Np, Am–Fm), most of which can also be used as nuclear fuels. –LaundryPizza03 (d c̄) 03:40, 24 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! This may not satisfy Garzfoth, who is convinced that plutonium is a fission product, and may believe this of other actinides too. Or if they don't know that plutonium is an actinide, we might get away with it. It would indeed be accurate IMO, unlike what we have now.

Or they may think it fails some of the other multiple ways in which they thought (or imagined) that calling them fuels was problematic. But perhaps we will never know what these are, and if so it probably doesn't matter.

I just want the current inaccuracy fixed. My solution seems the clearest, but this one is acceptable. Garzforth, is it acceptable to you? Andrewa (talk) 04:51, 24 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed thanks to LaundryPizza03. That is of course assuming that the current version is not problematic in multiple ways as Garzfoth suggested for my version... as they haven't disclosed any of the ways in which it was problematic, other than their belief that Plutonium is a fission product, we may never know. They have also been silent on whether this solution is acceptable to them. Perhaps this is a promising sign that they may have finally checked the accuracy of this easily falsified belief of theirs about Plutonium. I did provide the required wikilinks.

I linked to their user page above. It reads in part For some reason, people seem to hate the truth. They find comfort in ignorance, but get lost in it, swallowed up by the void, until they're just hollow shells with just barely a flicker of free thought left. Hopefully we have helped them to correct a little of their own ignorance, and hopefully they will appreciate that.

But in any case the damage that they did to the article because of this ignorance has now been corrected, so we can move on. Andrewa (talk) 11:14, 24 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Andrewa: The catty aggressive attitude here is really quite unnecessary and counterproductive. Yes, I mistakenly called plutonium a fission product when it is in fact an actinide; I apologize for the error. The implemented solution that LaundryPizza03 proposed is quite acceptable. Garzfoth (talk) 01:37, 12 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

What I learned in high school was that THE reason for nuclear reprocessing was to remove built up neutron poisons. They are what cause the fuel to lose power. The mention of actinides seems irrelevant. Mackerm (talk) 07:03, 12 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Nuclear fuel is REMOVED from reactors because neutron poisons degrade the power output. Fuel is REPROCESSED in order to add new Uranium fuel. ---Avatar317 ^(talk) 01:44, 13 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe use minor actinides in the opening sentence? More accurate, but it is still a means to the objective - to remove neutron poisons. Mackerm (talk) 22:19, 13 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]