Research and development on accelerator-driven transmutation system at JAERI

✍ Scribed by Toshinobu Sasa; Hiroyuki Oigawa; Kazufumi Tsujimoto; Kenji Nishihara; Kenji Kikuchi; Yuji Kurata; Shigeru Saito; Masatoshi Futakawa; Makoto Umeno; Nobuo Ouchi; Yasuo Arai; Kazuo Minato; Hideki Takano

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 935 KB
• Volume: 230
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0029-5493
• DOI: 10.1016/j.nucengdes.2003.11.033

✦ Synopsis

Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute carries out research and development on accelerator-driven system (ADS) to transmute minor actinides and long-lived fission products in high-level radioactive waste. The system is composed of high intensity proton accelerator, lead-bismuth spallation target and lead-bismuth cooled subcritical core with nitride fuel. About 2500 kg of minor actinide is loaded into the subcritical core. Annual transmutation amount using this system is 250 kg with 800 MW of thermal output. This transmutation amount corresponds to the amount of minor actinides produced from 10 units of 1GWe power reactors annually. A superconducting linear accelerator with the beam power of 20-30 MW is connected to drive the subcritical core. To maximize the transmutation efficiency, the nitride fuel without uranium, such as (Np, Am, Pu)N, is selected. The nitride fuel irradiated in the ADS is reprocessed by pyrochemical process followed by the re-fabrication of nitride fuel. Many research and development activities are under way and planned in the fields of subcritical core design, spallation target technology, lead-bismuth handling technology, accelerator development, and minor actinide fuel development. Especially, to study and evaluate the feasibility of the ADS from physics and engineering aspects, the transmutation experimental facility (TEF) is proposed under a framework of the High-Intensity Proton Accelerator Project.