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TRANSMUTATION: A DECADE OF REVIVAL
ISSUES, RELEVANT EXPERIMENTS AND PERSPECTIVES
OVERVIEW PAPER
M. Salvatores
CEA, Nuclear Reactor Directorate, Cadarache, France
Abstract
For more than a decade, transmutation studies have been again a topic of wide interest and have
triggered numerous international activities, like bilateral/multilateral collaborations, information
exchanges, state-of-the-art reports, conferences, but also some co-ordinated programmes and
experiments.
It is legitimate to ask at this point, whether transmutation studies are still “fashionable” and why; what
is known, what has been done and what should be done.
Since the motivations of national programmes are often different, due to a different context, we will
take for granted that transmutation is generally seen as an option for the back-end of the fuel cycle in
order to reduce the burden of potential geological storages of radioactive wastes (whatever their
nature).
Finally, we also acknowledge the fact that some highly respected scientists have at several occasions
during this decade expressed their doubts about the value of the transmutation option. A typical
example is the position expressed by Pigford and Rasmussen, reporting the results of a study for the
US National Research Council (IAEA-TECDOC-990, 2/12/1997).
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