Multiple Tier Fuel Cycle Studies for Waste Transmutation

Conference · Mon Jul 01 00:00:00 EDT 2002

OSTI ID:21064548

Hill, R N; Taiwo, T A; Stillman, J A; Graziano, D J ^[1]; Bennett, D R; Trellue, H ^[2]; Todosow, M ^[3]; Halsey, W G ^[4]; Baxter, A ^[5]

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1. Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Avenue Argonne, IL 60439 (United States)
2. Los Alamos National Laboratory, P.O. Box 1663, Los Alamos, NM 87545 (United States)
3. Brookhaven National Laboratory, P.O. Box 5000 Upton, NY 11973-5000 (United States)
4. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 7000 East Avenue, Livermore, CA 94550 (United States)
5. General Atomics, P.O. Box 85608, San Diego, CA 92186-5608 (United States)

As part of the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Accelerator Applications Program, a systems study was conducted to evaluate the transmutation performance of advanced fuel cycle strategies. Three primary fuel cycle strategies were evaluated: dual-tier systems with plutonium separation, dual-tier systems without plutonium separation, and single-tier systems without plutonium separation. For each case, the system mass flow and TRU consumption were evaluated in detail. Furthermore, the loss of materials in fuel processing was tracked including the generation of new waste streams. Based on these results, the system performance was evaluated with respect to several key transmutation parameters including TRU inventory reduction, radiotoxicity, and support ratio. The importance of clean fuel processing ({approx}0.1% losses) and inclusion of a final tier fast spectrum system are demonstrated. With these two features, all scenarios capably reduce the TRU and plutonium waste content, significantly reducing the radiotoxicity; however, a significant infrastructure (at least 1/10 the total nuclear capacity) is required for the dedicated transmutation system. (authors)

• Research Organization: The ASME Foundation, Inc., Three Park Avenue, New York, NY 10016-5990 (United States)
• OSTI ID: 21064548
• Resource Relation: Conference: ICONE-10: 10. international conference on nuclear engineering, Arlington - Virginia (United States), 14-18 Apr 2002; Other Information: Country of input: France
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE WASTES, AND NON-RADIOACTIVE WASTES FROM NUCLEAR FACILITIES
ACCELERATORS
CAPACITY
FUEL CYCLE
FUELS
INVENTORIES
PERFORMANCE
PLUTONIUM
RADIOACTIVE WASTES
TRANSMUTATION
WASTE PROCESSING