What is the nuclear fuel cycle?

The fuel cycle is the journey of nuclear material from the ground to the reactor and beyond: mine and mill uranium, enrich it, fabricate fuel, run it for years, then either store or recycle what comes out. It's a compact, well-understood industrial chain.

What's striking is how little material it takes and how much of it can be reused — a closed cycle recovers usable uranium and plutonium for new fuel, stretching a finite resource into a centuries-long one. That circularity is one of nuclear's underappreciated strengths.