Burn and bury option for plutonium

In December 1996, the U.S. DOE announced a strategy for managing fissile plutonium obtained from the disassembly of nuclear weapons. The plan calls for a dual-track plutonium disposition strategy that allows for immobilizing plutonium in glass or ceramic form and buring plutonium as mixed oxide fuel in existing reactors. This article proposes an option for both reactor- and weapons-grade plutonium disposition that incorporates both aspects of the dual-track strategy. It details the incorporation of plutonium in a nonfertile, ZrO 2 matrix ceramic fuel that will be burned in an existing light water nuclear reactor (LWR), and then buried in a geological repository without further reprocessing.