Transmutation of Transuranium Nuclides with FBR


A. Sasahara and T. Matsumura

Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry
11-1, Iwato Kita 2-Chome Komae-shi, Tokyo 201 Japan


High-level wastes contain transuranics (TRUs) such as neptunium, americium and curium, some of which have several millions years of half life and toxicity remaining over long period. Transmutation of TRUs in a FBR core was studied from points of; 1) Development of the analysis code that can treat complicated nuclear transformation of TRUs, 2) Comparison of transmutation rates between metallic fuel core and oxide fuel core.

TRUs of 5, 10, or 15% was charged with uniform distribution into each reactor core. Through this study, it was obvious that; 1) The charge of TRUs causes the increase of reactivity at the end of cycle for both metallic fuel and oxide fuel cores, 2) The transmutation rates of TRUs were higher in the metallic fuel core than in the oxide fuel core, 3) The amounts of plutonium to be charged could be reduced by adding TRUs for both metallic fuel and oxide fuel cores.

KEYWORDS: FBR, TRUs, transmutation, metallic fuel, oxide fuel