France's Areva has signed a contract to supply mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel for use in unit 3 of Hokkaido Electric Power Co's Tomari nuclear power reactor in Japan.
Under the terms of the contract, signed with Mitsubishi Nuclear Fuel (MNF), Areva will fabricate the MOX fuel at its Melox plant using plutonium recovered from used fuel at its La Hague reprocessing plant. MNF designed the MOX fuel to be used by Hokkaido...
...Construction of the 866 MWe Tomari 3 pressurized water reactor began in 2003. The reactor reached criticality on 3 March 2009 and test operations followed on 20 March. It was connected to the grid in December.
...About 5% of the content of MOX fuel is plutonium recovered from nuclear fuel already used in power-generating reactors. Recycling the material in this way increases the energy it produces by 12%, while if unfissioned uranium is also recovered and reused the figure increases to 22%. The process also allows the separation of the most highly radioactive fission products, meaning the volume of the most dangerous waste is reduced by over 60%...
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/ENF-MOX_fuel_contract_for_Hokkaido_reactor-3003104.html">MOX fuel contract for Hokkaido reactor.
A note about the Tomari Reactor:
The average continuous power of all wind turbines in Denmark produced, in 2006 was 22 petajoules (0.022 exajoules):
http://www.ens.dk/en-US/supply/Renewable-energy/WindPower/Facts-about-Wind-Power/Key-figures-statistics/Sider/Forside.aspx">Figures of the Danish Energy Agency.
Every year, year after year after year after year, the year
still contains 31,557,600 seconds.
This means that the average continuous power of all the wind turbines in Denmark is about 700 MWe, not that the power is delivered
reliably - much of it is
dumped at below market prices because it is available at times of low demand.
Thus, to produce as much
energy in a single relatively small building as Denmark can produce in a whole country of whirling metal - constructed over 28 years - the Tomari reactor, built in six years, need operate at (100)700/866 = 80% of capacity utilization, something that is relatively easy to do, since most nuclear reactors operate at better than 90% capacity utilization.
Here is a photograph of a MOX fuel pellet: