Impact of partitioning and transmutation on the high level waste management

Abstract

Nuclear energy generates 30% of the electricity in the EU. Still, different countries of EU27 have very different attitudes towards the future use of nuclear energy for electricity generation or other uses. However, independently of the political decision of continuation or phase out of the nuclear energy, all countries using nuclear energy to generate electricity are facing the question of the final management of its spent nuclear fuel and other high level radioactive wastes. Partition and Transmutation are emerging technologies that when integrated in advanced fuel cycles can strongly influence on the final wastes from the nuclear industry and its management. A review of the progress on the understanding of their real potentialities and main conclusions from a large number of international studies are presented in this paper. In particular, the conclusions from the main NEA working groups and the EURATOM RED-IMPACT project are jointly discussed. In this paper the emphasis is put on the effects of Partitioning and Transmutation on the inventory reduction, the heat source reduction and its implications to the repository capacity and on the performance assessment of the final repository.