UWFDM-1270 Managing Fusion High Level Waste - A Strategy for Burning the Long-Lived Products in Fusion Devices
نویسنده
چکیده
Fusion devices appear to be a viable option for burning their own high-level waste (HLW). We propose a novel waste management strategy to eliminate (or minimize) the HLW generated by fusion systems. The main source of the fusion HLW includes the structural materials without impurity control, recycled materials, refractory metals, and liquid breeder cleanup and reprocessing systems. The basic idea involves recycling and reprocessing the waste, separating the long-lived radionuclides from the bulk low-level waste, and irradiating the limited amount of HLW in a specially designed module to transmute the long-lived products into short-lived radioisotopes or preferably, stable elements. The potential performance of the new concept seems promising. Our analysis indicated moderate to excellent transmutation rates could be achieved with neutron fluxes attainable in advanced fusion designs. Successive irradiation should burn the majority of the HLW or in practice reduce its volume considerably. The figures of merit for the concept relate to the HLW burnup fraction, neutron economy, and impact on tritium breeding. Hopefully, the added design requirements and complexity could be accommodated easily in fusion power plants and the cost of the proposed system would be much less than disposal in a deep geological HLW repository. Overall, this innovative approach offers benefits to fusion systems and helps earn public acceptance for fusion as a HLW-free source of clean nuclear energy.
منابع مشابه
UWFDM-1155 Need for Special Burning Module in Fusion Devices to Transmute Fusion High-Level Waste
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