The Nuclear Fuel Cycle

A Complete Primer — the whole system, made understandable

By Jeff Hill. Independently published, June 2026. Paperback, hardcover and Kindle.

About the book

The Nuclear Fuel Cycle: A Complete Primer covers what most public arguments about nuclear energy skip: the complete industrial system behind it. Uranium must be mined, milled, converted, enriched, fabricated, irradiated, stored, and eventually either disposed of or recycled — and each step has its own constraints, its own institutions, and its own bottlenecks. Across twenty-seven chapters and seven reference appendices, this primer traces the full cycle in sequence, from the physics of fission through the front end of the fuel supply chain, the reactor, the back end, adjacent industrial systems, and the policy history that shaped the industry’s current condition. It assumes no specialized background in nuclear science, engineering, or energy policy — but it does assume patience with facts, quantities, and mechanisms. Nuclear energy is one of the safest large-scale electricity sources ever deployed yet remains one of the most feared; uranium is not geologically scarce yet supply can be strategically fragile; spent fuel is politically treated as an unsolved problem even though the technical pathways for managing it are well developed. The primer explains why those contradictions exist, what the documented record actually shows — and where the system is heading: toward a closed fuel cycle in which spent fuel becomes feedstock, waste volumes shrink by orders of magnitude, and the energy already extracted from the ground is used not once but many times over. For readers who want the whole map, not just the parts most convenient to any particular argument.

Who it’s for

Anyone who wants to follow the whole fuel cycle, from uranium in the ground to spent fuel and recycling, without a background in nuclear science. Readers who want the math will find it in the appendices, which include the physics and mathematics behind the primer and a problem set.