Pages: 294-303

Authors: Amer A. Al Qaaod, Volodymyr M. Pavlovych, Danas Ridikas, Volodymyr Gulik, and Esmat H. Amin

Abstract

In this paper, the feasibility of high-level radioactive waste transmutation in accelerator driven system sub-critical reactor assembly, has been studied for two zone's model and with three different core configurations. The inner zone has a fast neutron spectrum and the outer one has a thermal neutron spectrum. The subcritical core is coupled with external neutron source of energy 14 MeV (D-T source). The effects of high level waste isotopes sample (²³⁸Pu, ²³⁹Pu,
²⁴⁰Pu, ²⁴¹Pu, ²⁴²Pu, ²⁴¹Am, ²⁴³Am, ²⁴⁴Cm, and ²⁴⁵Cm) distribution on the neutron spectrum and burnup performance in the inner zone have been investigated and discussed, by proposed three core configurations non-uniform, uniform, and spiral. The burnup calculations have been performed for one-year operation cycle for all the all proposed models. This work shows that one can effectively transmute most of the actual minor actinides isotopes in the inner fast spectrum zone of the proposed system, with optimal distribution of these isotopes.

Key words: burnup, neutron spectrum, actinide, waste transmutation, accelerator driven system, fission rate

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