Partitioning and Transmutation of Spent Nuclear Fuel by Peacer

Challenges of managing long-living spent nuclear fuel wastes are to be technically overcome by a partitioning and transmutation system named as PEACER that is an abbreviation of its design goals: Proliferation-resistant, Environment-friendly, Accident-tolerant, Continuable and Economical Reactor. PEACER has been developed to manage spent nuclear fuels by uniquely combining Pb-Bi cooled critical reactor and pyrochemical partitioning process. The PEACER design with thermal traps can transmute long-living transuranic (TRU) elements and fission products including Tc and I at least two times the rate they are produced from an LWR having the same electric power rating. Based on asymptotic core outlet temperature estimated using Wade, et al’s method, the safety characteristics of PEACER was evaluated for loss of heat sink accident and loss of flow accident without scram. Result shows that PEACER has an equivalent or better safety characteristics compared with the sodium cooled ALMR burner design. The pyrochemical partitioning process has been conceptually designed so that the transmutation of spent LWR fuels in PEACER can produce mainly low-level waste (U.S. Class C waste) for near-surface burial. Judged from a system analysis, an overall decontamination factor for transuranic elements has to be greater than 2×10 in order to assure the economy. Under the condition, the volume of the final low-level waste is estimated to be small enough to make PEACER concept viable for densely populated countries.