General Nuclear - 1969-1974 dated Stock Certificate - Rare Topic

Stock printed by Goes. Nuclear power harnesses the energy from nuclear reactions to generate electricity. This energy can be derived from nuclear fission, nuclear decay, and nuclear fusion. Currently, the majority of nuclear-generated electricity comes from the fission of uranium and plutonium in nuclear power plants. While nuclear decay processes are used in specialized applications, such as powering space probes like Voyager 2, the pursuit of electricity from nuclear fusion remains a key focus of global research.

Most nuclear power plants employ thermal reactors that use enriched uranium in a once-through fuel cycle. After about three years, when neutron-absorbing atoms in the fuel become too abundant to sustain a chain reaction, the spent fuel is removed. It is then stored in on-site pools to cool for several years before being moved to long-term storage. Although the spent fuel is small in volume, it is highly radioactive and must be securely isolated from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years. However, advanced technologies like fast reactors could significantly reduce this waste.

Because spent fuel still contains usable fissionable material, some countries, such as France and Russia, choose to reprocess it by extracting fissile and fertile elements to produce new fuel. However, this process is more costly than creating new fuel from mined uranium. Additionally, since all reactors produce some plutonium-239—a key ingredient for nuclear weapons—reprocessing poses a risk of nuclear proliferation. Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power