Overall assessment of actinide partitioning and transmutation for waste management purposes
A program to establish the technical feasibility and incentives for partitioning (i.e., recovering) actinides from fuel cycle wastes and then transmuting them in power reactors to shorter-lived or stable nuclides has recently been concluded at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The feasibility was established by experimentally investigating the reduction that can be practicably achieved in the actinide content of the wastes sent to a geologic repository, and the incentives for implementing this concept were defined by determining the incremental costs, risks, and benefits. Eight US Department of Energy laboratories and three private companies participated in the program over its 3-year duration. A reference fuel cycle was chosen based on a self-generated plutonium recycle PWR, and chemical flowsheets based on solvent extraction and ion-exchange techniques were generated that have the potential to reduce actinides in fuel fabrication and reprocessing plant wastes to less than 0.25% of those in the spent fuel. Waste treatment facilities utilizing these flowsheets were designed conceptually, and their costs were estimated. Finally, the short-term (contemporary) risks from fuel cycle operations and long-term (future) risks from deep geologic disposal of the wastes were estimated for cases with and without partitioning and transmutation. It was concluded that, while both actinide partitioning from wastes and transmutation in power reactors appear to be feasible using currently identified and studied technology, implementation of this concept cannot be justified because of the small long-term benefits and substantially increased costs of the concept.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Lab., TN (USA); Georgia Inst. of Tech., Atlanta (USA)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Nuclear Waste Management
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-26
- OSTI ID:
- 5558264
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-800444-1; TRN: 80-007773
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 2. technical meeting on the nuclear transmutation of actinides, Ispra, Italy, 21 Apr 1980
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS
ACTINIDES
MATERIALS RECOVERY
FEASIBILITY STUDIES
RADIOACTIVE WASTE MANAGEMENT
COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS
FLOWSHEETS
ION EXCHANGE
RADIOACTIVE WASTES
RISK ASSESSMENT
SOLVENT EXTRACTION
SPENT FUELS
TRANSMUTATION
DIAGRAMS
ELEMENTS
ENERGY SOURCES
EXTRACTION
FUELS
MANAGEMENT
MATERIALS
METALS
NUCLEAR FUELS
PROCESSING
RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS
REACTOR MATERIALS
RECOVERY
SEPARATION PROCESSES
WASTE MANAGEMENT
WASTE PROCESSING
WASTES
052000* - Nuclear Fuels- Waste Management
050800 - Nuclear Fuels- Spent Fuels Reprocessing