Spent nuclear fuel from light water reactors (LWR) contains a mixture of uranium and plutonium (up to 95 % of the initial uranium mass), fission products, and minor actinides such as neptunium, americium, and curium. In the shorter term, the highly active but short-lived fission products will dominate the activity of this spent fuel. However, the transuranics including plutonium and the minor actinides (together with a few long-lived fission products) are largely responsible for the long-term radiotoxicity and heat production of LWR spent fuel.

The principle behind Partitioning and Transmutation (P&T) is to isolate the minor actinides from this LWR spent fuel and transmute them. As for these isotopes the fission to capture ratio increases with increasing neutron energy, a fast neutron spectrum facility is required. By burning the minor actinides, the long-lived, heat — producing component of spent fuel can be strongly reduced, which decreases the radiotoxicity of the spent fuel and its heat load. Both conditions will ease the design and construction of a long-term storage solution (geological disposal) from the engineering point of view.

Partitioning & Transmutation requires the development of an advanced fuel cycle. Currently, two major options for P&T are being studied worldwide: the single-stratum approach wherein the minor actinides are burned in fast reactors that are deployed for electricity production and the double-strata approach where the Pu

is burned for electricity production in LWRs and FRs whereas the minor actinides are burned in a dedicated facility (Fig. 7.5).

In the single-stratum approach, the minor actinides can be mixed homoge­neously in the fast reactor fuel or can be loaded in dedicated targets. In the homogeneous option, care must be taken in the analysis of the change in the core safety parameters such as delayed neutron fraction, Doppler constant, and void coefficient. By increasing the concentration of minor actinides in the fuel mixture, these safety parameters typically go in the wrong direction and hence pose a threat to the reactor safety. Because of this, one expects a maximum of 4-5 % minor actinide loading in the fuel.

Also, the fabrication and reprocessing of this “spiked” fast reactor fuel or the dedicated minor actinide target requires extra care because the presence of the minor actinides increases heat production during these fabrication processes. The presence of Cm-244 will pose a shielding problem because of its spontaneous fission and hence neutron emission.

Given the fact that only small amounts of minor actinides can be loaded per reactor, limited by a maximum concentration in case of the homogeneous option or limited by the number of target positions in the heterogeneous option, a large number of reactors will be required to use this minor actinide-spiked fuel or house these dedicated targets; this will certainly be the case when nations decide to also treat their legacy LWR waste and not only the minor actinides produced in this future advanced fuel cycle. Implied are a large number of transports of these fuels and targets from reprocessing site to fuel fabrication site and to transmutation sites and back.

In the double-strata approach, a dedicated transmutation facility is foreseen in the form of an accelerator-driven system. Because of the reactor physics properties of such an ADS (one does not rely on a subtle equilibrium such as the chain reaction, but the ADS subcritical core acts merely as a multiplier of a primary neutron source), one can devise fuels that have a very high minor actinide content. The EC-FP6 program IP-EUROTRANS delivered the conceptual design of such an industrial transmuter (EFIT). In EFIT, 400 MWth core designs were made with uranium-free inert matrix fuels having a mixture of plutonium and minor actinides. In EFIT, the so-called 42-0 approach core was developed, meaning a core design that would be as plutonium neutral as possible (no burning nor breeding of plutonium) and which could in optimal conditions burn 42 kg minor actinides per TWh power produced. This system was used in the EC-FP6 program PATEROS, which produced a roadmap for the development of Partitioning and Transmutation at the European level. The deployment of such an industrial transmuter as EFIT would be very difficult for small nuclear countries and hence this scheme is optimal in a regional approach.

Because the burning of the minor actinides is done in a very concentrated manner, these industrial transmuters can be located near a fuel reprocessing and transmuter fuel fabrication facility, limiting the transportation of hazardous mate­rials. Calculations have indicated that the support ratio, that is, the ratio of the total power of industrial transmuters to the total power of electricity-generating systems, is about 6 %. Also with this “concentrated” approach, one can much easier envisage the burning of the LWR legacy waste in a reasonable amount of time without impacting the regular electricity production installations.

Within the PATEROS project, a number of nuclear fuel cycle scenarios have been studied. Different regions have been identified: a group of countries that are stagnant with respect to nuclear energy production or in phase-out (“Group A,” typically Belgium, Czech Republic, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland) and a group of countries which are developing an advanced fuel cycling with the deploy­ment of fast reactors (“Group B,” typically France). Different objectives were set concerning the burning of the minor actinides. Within the EC-F7 ARCAS project, which continues on the work done in PATEROS, it was estimated that to burn the minor actinides present in Group A in a reasonable time frame (less than 100 years), the group would need to deploy 7 EFIT-like facilities. If also Group B wants to stabilize their minor actinide inventory, 15 EFIT-like installations would be needed, and if total minor actinide elimination is required in Groups A and B, 20 EFIT-like installations are to be built.

At the European level, four building block strategies for partitioning and trans­mutation have been identified. Each block poses a serious challenge in research and development to reach an industrial-scale deployment. These blocks are as follows.

• Demonstration of advanced reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from LWRs,

separating uranium, plutonium, and minor actinides;

• Demonstrate the capability to fabricate at semi-industrial level dedicated transmuter fuel heavily loaded in minor actinides;

• Design and construct one or more dedicated transmuters;

• Demonstration of advanced reprocessing of transmuter fuel together with the fabrication of new transmuter fuel.

MYRRHA will support this roadmap by playing the role of an accelerator-driven system prototype (at reasonable power level) and as a flexible irradiation facility providing fast neutrons for the qualification of materials and fuel for an industrial transmuter. MYRRHA will be capable of irradiating samples of this inert matrix fuels, but it is also foreseen to house fuel pins or even a limited number of fuel assemblies heavily loaded with MAs for irradiation and qualification purposes.

1.2 Conclusions

SCK^CEN is proposing to replace its aging flagship facility, the Material Testing Reactor BR2, by a new flexible irradiation facility, MYRRHA. Considering inter­national and European needs, MYRRHA is conceived as a flexible fast spectrum irradiation facility able to work in both subcritical and critical mode. Despite several nonobvious design challenges, such as the use of LBE, the increased level of seismic loading (consequence of Fukushima), or the choice of passive mode for decay heat removal in emergency conditions, we found no significant showstopper in the design. The R&D program that is running in parallel has taken into account international recommendations from experts concerning the remaining technolog­ical challenges as mentioned in Section VI (above).

MYRRHA is now foreseen to be in full operation by 2025, and it will be able to be operated in both operation modes, subcritical and critical. In subcritical mode, it will demonstrate the ADS technology and the efficient demonstration of MA in subcritical mode. As a fast spectrum irradiation facility, it will address fuel research for innovative reactor systems, material research for GEN IV systems and for fusion reactors, radioisotope production for medical and industrial applications, and industrial applications, such as Si-doping.

The MYRRHA design has now entered into the Front End Engineering Phase, covering the period 2012-2015. The engineering company that handles this phase has currently started the work. At the end of this phase, the purpose is to have

• Progressed in such a way in the design of the facility that the specifications for the different procurement packages of the facility can be written,

• Adequately addressed the remaining outstanding R&D issues,

• obtained the construction and exploitation permits, and

• Formed the international members’ consortium for MYRRHA.

Belgium and SCK^CEN have opened participation in the MYRRHA to EU member states and to the European Commission but also to worldwide participation, as the issue of safe and efficient management of high-level nuclear waste is a worldwide issue, whatever the policy adopted or to be adopted by the countries that have industrialized nuclear power generation and want to phase it out, those willing to continue its use, and those willing to start nuclear power generation.

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