Preliminary assessment of partitioning and transmutation as a radioactive waste management concept

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Abstract
Partitioning (separating) the actinide elements from nuclear fuel cycle wastes and transmuting (burning) them to fission products in power reactors represents a potentially advanced concept of radioactive waste management which could reduce the long-term (greater than 1000 years) risk associated with geologic isolation of wastes. The greatest uncertainties lie in the chemical separations technology needed to recover greater than 99 percent of the actinides during the reprocessing of spent fuels and their refabrication as fresh fuels or target elements. Preliminary integrated flowsheets based on modifications of the Purex process and supplementary treatment by oxalate precipitation and ion exchange indicate that losses of plutonium in reprocessing wastes might be reduced from about 2.0 percent to 0.1 percent, uranium losses from about 1.7 percent to 0.1 percent, neptunium losses from 100 percent to about 1.2 percent, and americium and curium from 100 percent to about 0.5 percent. Mixed oxide fuel fabrication losses may be reduced from about 0.5 percent to 0.06 percent for plutonium and from 0.5 percent to 0.04 percent for uranium. Americium losses would be about 5.5 percent for the reference system. Transmutation of the partitioned actinides at a rate of 5 to 7 percent per year is feasible inmore » both fast and thermal reactors, but additional studies are needed to determine the most suitable strategy for recycling them to reactors and to assess the major impacts of implementing the concept on fuel cycle operations and costs. It is recommended that the ongoing program to evaluate the feasibility, impacts, costs, and incentives of implementing partitioning-transmutation be continued until a firm assessment of its potentialities can be made. At the present level of effort, achievement of this objective should be possible by 1980. 27 tables, 50 figures. « less

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