**3.2 Connected fuel cycle**

EBR-II was originally designed as a power-producing facility which would be able to produce more fuel (in the form of plutonium) than it consumed. To accomplish this, blanket subassemblies were placed around the periphery of the core, where neutrons which leaked out would be absorbed by U-238 to produce plutonium. In addition to creating a core design which was favorable for generating fuel, additional facilities were constructed on-site to allow for fuel/experiment examination and fuel reprocessing.

The fuel cycle facility (FCF) was built to allow for post-irradiation examination of experiments placed in the core [11]. FCF allowed for experiments to be removed from one subassembly and placed in a new subassembly for further irradiation if necessary. Along with this, FCF was used to reprocess spent EBR-II fuel using a crude melt refining technique rather than a complicated and large solvent extraction process. Melt refining involved melting the spent fuel elements and mechanically separating fission products and slag from the uranium. The uranium (or other actinides) was then used to fabricate additional fuel.

The last decade of operations for EBR-II was focused on the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) concept [12, 13]. This project encompassed nearly all aspects of life for a nuclear reactor. The IFR concept was meant to overcome many obstacles such as

proliferation concerns, waste generation concerns, and reactor safety concerns. The IFR concept was meant to provide the United States (and the world) with a nuclear energy concept that could provide a nearly inexhaustible energy supply for the future. Unfortunately, in 1994, the IFR concept and indeed EBR-II was terminated, and the full realization of the IFR concept never came to pass.
