Radioactive Waste Partitioning and Transmutation within Advanced Fuel Cycles: Achievements and Challenges

• Published in: Progress in particle and nuclear physics 2011-01, Vol.66 (1)
• Main Authors: M. Salvatores, G. Palmiotti
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS; Nuclear Reactor, Partitioning, Transmutation, Adva
• ISSN: 0146-6410; 1873-2224
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ppnp.2010.10.001

If nuclear power should become a sustainable source of energy, a safe, robust and acceptable solution must be pursued for existing and projected inventories of high-activity, long-lived radioactive waste. Remarkable progress in the last two decades has been made in the field of geological disposal. Some countries have reached important milestones and geological disposal (of spent fuel) is expected to start in 2020 in Finland and in 2022 in Sweden and in fact the licensing of the geological repositories in both countries is now entering into their final phases. In France disposal of Intermediate Level Wastes (ILW) and vitrified High Level Wastes (HLW) is expected to start around 2025, according to the roadmap defined by a Parliament Act in 2006. In this context, transmutation of part of the waste through use of advanced fuel cycles, probably feasible in the coming decades, has the potential of reducing the burden on the geological repository. This article presents the physical principle of transmutation and reviews several strategies of P&T (Partitioning and Transmutation). Many recent studies have demonstrated that the impact of P&T on geological disposal concepts is not overwhelmingly high. However, by reducing waste heat production a more efficient utilization of repository space is likely. Moreover, even if radionuclide release from the waste to the environment and related calculated doses to the population are only partially reduced by P&T, it is important to point out that a clear reduction of the actinide inventory in the High Level Waste definitely reduces risks arising from less probable evolutions of a repository, i.e. increase of actinide mobility in certain geochemical situations and radiological impact by human intrusion.