Preliminary Study on Minor Actinide Incineration in RSG-GAS without Isotope Separation

Abstract

Minor actinides (MA) resulted from nuclear power plants is often considered as nuisance in spent fuel management due to its considerably long half-life. One of available strategies to deal with MA is to incinerate it, in order to reduce its radioactivity. This paper presents a study on MA incineration in RSG-GAS research reactor. Unlike previous study, this work did not separate the MA into individual isotopes, but incinerated as a whole. ORIGEN2.1 code is employed to calculate MA incineration within RSG-GAS core. MA composition used in this study consists of Np, Am, and Cm isotopes. The Central Irradiation Position (CIP) of RSG-GAS is loaded by 6 kg of MA and irradiated for two years. The result shows that about 1 kg of MA were incinerated after two years of irradiation, or 18,87% of the initial concentration. However, the increase of Cm-242 isotope, along with newly-formed Pu isotopes, were found to be significantly increasing short-term radioactivity compared to un-irradiated MA. Thus, two years-worth of MA incineration cannot be considered as effective, and other strategies must be pursued.

Transmutation of Transuranic Elements as Solid Coating in Molten Salt Reactor Fuel Channel

“…Spent nuclear fuel (SNF) is often considered one of the hindrances to the global expansion of nuclear power. The primary issue in the SNF lies in the transuranic (TRU) elements, which consist of plutonium (Pu) and minor actinide (MA) isotopes [1]. Many TRU isotopes have a long half-life so that the time required for them to decay until the remaining radioactivity equals the reference value spans up to 130,000 years [2].…”