COMPLETE DOCUMENT (1862 kb) - OECD Nuclear Energy Agency

Swedish activities [117]
Research on partitioning and transmutation is mainly supported by the Swedish Nuclear Fuel
and Waste Management Co. (SKB). The main activities occur at the Royal Institute of Technology in
Stockholm, where physics, safety and other aspects of ADSs are studied. The groups has strong
international cooperations and participate in projects supported by EU. The Svedberg Laboratory at
Uppsala has recently started a project for cross-section measurements of interest for ADSs.
PSI activities, Switzerland
The PSI activities in the field of transmutation aim at investigating the potential ADSs with regard
to reactor performance and radioactive waste management aspects and at supporting developments for
the SINQ spallation neutron source. More specifically, the activities comprise high-current cyclotron
development and conceptual design work [97], material technology development work for spallation
targets, the experimental validation of models in nucleon-meson transport codes by means of the
ATHENA irradiation experiments using actinide targets [118], reactor physics and safety analyses of
ADSs, and comparison studies for different reactor types and fuel cycles with emphasis on the impact of
alternative transmutation strategies on the long-term risk of the radioactive waste [119].
LANL project, USA
LANL is developing a linear accelerator with a beam power of hundreds of MW under the
APT (Accelerator Production of Tritium) Programme. The project has had many independent reviews.
Their conclusions were positive regarding the accelerator and target technologies, but pointed out the
need for an appropriate R&D programme [120].
The LANL ATW programme [121,122] aims at reducing the amount and long time hazard of
the spent fuel from US commercial nuclear reactors. The ATW-system would incinerate the TRU waste
and transmute selected FPs, such as 99 Tc and perhaps 129 I. The ATW-system is a fast spectrum liquid
lead-bismuth cooled device coupled to an APT-class linear proton accelerator. (The accelerator,
providing a current of 100 mA and a proton energy of 1 GeV is developed for tritium production, also
at LANL). The fuel fabrication and the fuel cycle relies on pyrometallurgical processing.
LANL is proposing an experimental programme called LIFT [123]. The experiments will be
carried out using 1 MW proton beam at LANSCE on Pb-Bi loop and on a ~5 MWt integral
target/blanket.
CERN EA project
CERN is working on the conceptual design of a so-called Energy Amplifier (EA) and this
development may be of use to P&T. The design as originally suggested used a moderated system [124].
The present concept is an oxide fuel, Pb-cooled fast subcritical system driven by a 1 GeV-12.5 mA
cyclotron [125]. This system was also proposed as a Pu burner [126]. The first demonstration plant is
planned to run with a superconducting linac [127]. The CERN group has performed a high-energy
physics experiment associated with the concept [128] on a natural U assembly irradiated by 1-3 GeV
proton beam.
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