Fission Product Transmutation in Mixed Radiation Fields

Abstract

Work under this grant addressed a part of the challenge facing the closure of the nuclear fuel cycle; reducing the radiotoxicity of lived fission products (LLFP). It was based on the possibility that partitioning of isotopes and accelerator-based transmutation on particular LLFP combined with geological disposal may lead to an acceptable societal solution to the problem of management. The feasibility of using photonuclear processes based on the excitation of the giant dipole resonance (GDR) by bremsstrahlung radiation as a cost effective transmutation method was accessed. The nuclear reactions of interest: (γ,xn), (n,γ), (γ,p) can be induced by bremsstrahlung radiation produced by high power electron accelerators. The driver of these processes would be an accelerator that produces a high energy and high power electron beam of ~ 100 MeV. The major advantages of such accelerators for this purpose are that they are essentially available “off the shelf” and potentially would be of reasonable cost for this application. Methods were examined that used photo produced neutrons or the bremsstrahlung photons only, or use both photons and neutrons in combination for irradiations of selected LLFP. Extrapolating the results to plausible engineering scale transmuters it was found that the energy cost for 129I andmore » 99Tc transmutation by these methods are about 2 and 4%, respectively, of the energy produced from 1000MWe.« less