Actinide transmutation in a thermal reactor
Book
·
OSTI ID:100851
- Politecnico di Milano (Italy). Nuclear Engineering Dept.
The long term radiotoxicity of nuclear wastes may be substantially reduced by long irradiation in thermal reactors. Preliminary calculations showed that appreciable quantities of the minor actinides and long lived fission products may be recycled in a power PWR, and that, a few centuries after 20--30 years of irradiation, they reach radiotoxicity levels comparable to those of the uranium quantity required to make the corresponding fuel amount. The purpose of the present work is to investigate the conceptual possibility of reducing the level of the long term radiotoxicity, due to Minor Actinides and Long-Lived Fission Products (MA/LLFP) produced in UO{sub 2} fuel, by long irradiation of them in a power PWR. More precisely the authors pursued the objective of determining what fraction of the MA/LLFP mixture produced in a 1,000 MWe PWR during its whole life, may be burned in a similar power reactor. A waste burning efficiency has been considered satisfactory if the long term radiotoxicity of the MA/LLFP contained in a given quantity of spent fuel reaches, a few centuries after its irradiation, the level corresponding to that of the amount of natural uranium required to produce the same quantity of fresh fuel. This waiting time is in fact necessary in any case for cooling the other fission products to a sufficiently low radioactivity level and is a time span not unreasonable when considering man-made barriers against the radionuclide diffusion into the biosphere.
- OSTI ID:
- 100851
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-930906--; ISBN 0-7918-0691-X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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