Overall assessment of actinide partitioning and transmutation for waste management purposes

Conference · Tue Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1980

OSTI ID:5558264

Blomeke, J. O.; Croff, A. G.; Finney, B. C.; Tedder, D. W.

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
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

050800 -- Nuclear Fuels-- Spent Fuels Reprocessing
052000* -- Nuclear Fuels-- Waste Management
11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS
12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE WASTES FROM NUCLEAR FACILITIES
ACTINIDES
COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS
DIAGRAMS
ELEMENTS
ENERGY SOURCES
EXTRACTION
FEASIBILITY STUDIES
FLOWSHEETS
FUELS
ION EXCHANGE
MANAGEMENT
MATERIALS
MATERIALS RECOVERY
METALS
NUCLEAR FUELS
PROCESSING
RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS
RADIOACTIVE WASTE MANAGEMENT
RADIOACTIVE WASTES
REACTOR MATERIALS
RECOVERY
RISK ASSESSMENT
SEPARATION PROCESSES
SOLVENT EXTRACTION
SPENT FUELS
TRANSMUTATION
WASTE MANAGEMENT
WASTE PROCESSING
WASTES