International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Research Applications and Utilization of Accelerators

4-8 May 2009, Vienna

Comparative Study of ADS-Burners Efficiency with Thermal, Intermediate and Fast Neutron Spectrum for Transmutation of Minor Actinides

A. Gulevich¹, E. Zemskov¹, A. Degtyarev²,, A. Kalugin², O. Kolyaskin², L. Ponomarev², V. Konev³, and V. Seliverstov³

¹Institute of Physics and Power Engineering, Russia
²Russian Research Center “Kurchatov Institute”, Russia
³Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics, Russia

Corresponding Author: mucatex.leonid@g23.relcom.ru

The problem of minor actinides (MA) in the closed nuclear fuel cycle (NFC) is a one of the most important for future nuclear energetic. There are several approaches for MA transmutation but there are no common criteria for the comparison of their efficiency. In paper [1] we turned out the attention to the importance of taking into account the duration of the closed NFC in addition to a usual criterion of the neutron economy. In accordance with these criteria the different ADS-burners are considered: LBE-cooled reactor (fast neutron spectrum), molten-salt reactor (intermedium spectrum) and heavy water reactor (thermal spectrum). It shown that the time of transmutation of loaded MA in the closed nuclear fuel cycle is more than 50 years. All calculations are normalized to the ADS-burner power 1 GWth.

[1] A. Gulevich, A. Kalugin, L. Ponomarev, V. Seliverstov, M. Seregin, Comparative Study of ADS for Minor Actinides Transmutation, Progress in Nuclear Energy 50, March-August (2008) p.358.

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