Advanced Reactors with Innovative Fuels
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Depleted Uranium Technical Brief
Disclaimer - For assistance accessing this document or additional information,please contact [email protected]. Depleted Uranium Technical Brief United States Office of Air and Radiation EPA-402-R-06-011 Environmental Protection Agency Washington, DC 20460 December 2006 Depleted Uranium Technical Brief EPA 402-R-06-011 December 2006 Project Officer Brian Littleton U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Radiation and Indoor Air Radiation Protection Division ii iii FOREWARD The Depleted Uranium Technical Brief is designed to convey available information and knowledge about depleted uranium to EPA Remedial Project Managers, On-Scene Coordinators, contractors, and other Agency managers involved with the remediation of sites contaminated with this material. It addresses relative questions regarding the chemical and radiological health concerns involved with depleted uranium in the environment. This technical brief was developed to address the common misconception that depleted uranium represents only a radiological health hazard. It provides accepted data and references to additional sources for both the radiological and chemical characteristics, health risk as well as references for both the monitoring and measurement and applicable treatment techniques for depleted uranium. Please Note: This document has been changed from the original publication dated December 2006. This version corrects references in Appendix 1 that improperly identified the content of Appendix 3 and Appendix 4. The document also clarifies the content of Appendix 4. iv Acknowledgments This technical bulletin is based, in part, on an engineering bulletin that was prepared by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Radiation and Indoor Air (ORIA), with the assistance of Trinity Engineering Associates, Inc. -
Spent Fuel Reprocessing
Spent Fuel Reprocessing Robert Jubin Oak Ridge National Laboratory Reprocessing of used nuclear fuel is undertaken for several reasons. These include (1) recovery of the valuable fissile constituents (primarily 235U and plutonium) for subsequent reuse in recycle fuel; (2) reduction in the volume of high-level waste (HLW) that must be placed in a geologic repository; and (3) recovery of special isotopes. There are two broad approaches to reprocessing: aqueous and electrochemical. This portion of the course will only address the aqueous methods. Aqueous reprocessing involves the application of mechanical and chemical processing steps to separate, recover, purify, and convert the constituents in the used fuel for subsequent use or disposal. Other major support systems include chemical recycle and waste handling (solid, HLW, low-level liquid waste (LLLW), and gaseous waste). The primary steps are shown in Figure 1. Figure 1. Aqueous Reprocessing Block Diagram. Head-End Processes Mechanical Preparations The head end of a reprocessing plant is mechanically intensive. Fuel assemblies weighing ~0.5 MT must be moved from a storage facility, may undergo some degree of disassembly, and then be sheared or chopped and/or de-clad. The typical head-end process is shown in Figure 2. In the case of light water reactor (LWR) fuel assemblies, the end sections are removed and disposed of as waste. The fuel bundle containing the individual fuel pins can be further disassembled or sheared whole into segments that are suitable for subsequent processing. During shearing, some fraction of the radioactive gases and non- radioactive decay product gases will be released into the off-gas systems, which are designed to recover these and other emissions to meet regulatory release limits. -
The Electronuclear Conversion of Fertile to Fissile Material
UCRL-52144 THE ELECTRONUCLEAR CONVERSION OF FERTILE TO FISSILE MATERIAL C. M. Van Atta J. D. Lee H. Heckrotto October 11, 1976 Prepared for U.S. Energy Research & Development Administration under contract No. W-7405-Eng-48 II\M LAWRENCE lUg LIVERMORE k^tf LABORATORY UnrmsilyotCatftxna/lJvofmofe s$ PC DISTRIBUTION OF THIS DOCUMENmmT IS UMUMWTED NOTICE Thii npoit WM prepared w u account of wot* •pomond by UM Uiilttd Stalwi GovcmiMM. Nittim Uw United Stain nor the United Statn Energy tUwardi it Development AdrnWrtrtUon, not «y of thei* employee!, nor any of their contricton, •ubcontrecton, or their employe*!, makti any warranty, expreai « Implied, or muMi any toga) liability oc reeponafctUty for the accuracy, completenni or uMfulntat of uy Information, apperatui, product or proem dlecloead, or repreienl. that tu UM would not *nfrkig» prrrtt*)}MWiwd r%hl». NOTICE Reference to a oompmy or product rum don not imply approval or nconm ndatjon of the product by the Untnrtity of California or the US. Energy Research A Devetopnient Administration to the uchvton of others that may be suitable. Printed In the United Stitei or America Available from National Technical Information Service U.S. Department of Commerce 528S Port Royal Road Springfield, VA 22161 Price: Printed Copy S : Microfiche $2.25 DMimtic P»t» Ranflt PHca *•#» Rtnft MM 001-025 $ 3.50 326-350 10.00 026-050 4.00 351-375 10.50 051-075 4.50 376-400 10.75 076-100 5.00 401-425 11.00 101-125 5.50 426-450 31.75 126-150 6.00 451-475 12.00 151-175 6.75 476-500 12.50 176-200 7.50 501-525 12.75 201-225 7.75 526-550 13.00 526-250 8.00 551-575 13.50 251-275 9.00 576-600 I3.7S 276-300 9.25 601 -up 301-325 9.75 *Ml J2.50 fot «ch iddltlOMl 100 pip tacmitMt from 601 ID 1,000 flfcK IM 54.50 for eicli iMUknal I0O plfe feenmMI om 1,000 p*o. -
Radioactive Waste Management Programmes in OECD/NEA Member Countries – Overview
Cov-Eng-Pochette 2005 21/09/05 15:04 Page 1 Australia Radioactive Waste Belgium Canada Management Programmes Czech Republic Finland in OECD/NEA Member France Countries Germany Hungary Italy Japan Korea Mexico Netherlands Norway Slovak Republic Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom United States NUCLEAR•ENERGY•AGENCY 1-OVERVIEW.qxp 16/11/05 17:18 Page 1 Radioactive waste management programmes in OECD/NEA member countries – Overview International co-operation at the OECD/NEA concerning the management of radioactive waste and materials The role of the NEA Radioactive Waste Management Committee (RWMC) Radioactive waste and materials exist in countries Strategies with and without nuclar power programmes and need In particular, the RWMC facilitates the elaboration to be managed in a manner that is responsible to pres- of strategies for waste management and decommis- ent and future generations. Significant progress has sioning, including regulatory approaches, at the been achieved and considerable experience is avail- national and international levels by: able in NEA member countries on waste and mate- ● reviewing strategies adopted by member countries rials processing, conditioning, storage, transport and with a view to identify and analyse emerging tech- disposal. An important experience and knowledge nical, policy and regulatory issues and to forge base has also been developed as regards decommis- consensus views; sioning and dismantling nuclear installations. Special ● reviewing regulatory bases, requirements and efforts are being expended in the area of long-term criteria, and licensing processes, in addition to management of radioactive waste in order to continue proposing regulatory approaches; to integrate technical advances and societal demands ● in decision making as well as to understand and developing methodologies for evaluating long-term develop consensus views on regulatory and policy safety; ● issues. -
Abundant Thorium As an Alternative Nuclear Fuel Important Waste Disposal and Weapon Proliferation Advantages
Energy Policy 60 (2013) 4–12 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Energy Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol Abundant thorium as an alternative nuclear fuel Important waste disposal and weapon proliferation advantages Marvin Baker Schaffer n RAND Corporation, 1776 Main Street, Santa Monica, CA 90407, United States HIGHLIGHTS Thorium is an abundant nuclear fuel that is well suited to three advanced reactor configurations. Important thorium reactor configurations include molten salt, CANDU, and TRISO systems. Thorium has important nuclear waste disposal advantages relative to pressurized water reactors. Thorium as a nuclear fuel has important advantages relative to weapon non-proliferation. article info abstract Article history: It has long been known that thorium-232 is a fertile radioactive material that can produce energy in Received 10 May 2012 nuclear reactors for conversion to electricity. Thorium-232 is well suited to a variety of reactor types Accepted 26 April 2013 including molten fluoride salt designs, heavy water CANDU configurations, and helium-cooled TRISO- Available online 30 May 2013 fueled systems. Keywords:: Among contentious commercial nuclear power issues are the questions of what to do with long-lived Thorium radioactive waste and how to minimize weapon proliferation dangers. The substitution of thorium for Non-proliferation uranium as fuel in nuclear reactors has significant potential for minimizing both problems. Nuclear waste reduction Thorium is three times more abundant in nature than uranium. Whereas uranium has to be imported, there is enough thorium in the United States alone to provide adequate grid power for many centuries. A well-designed thorium reactor could produce electricity less expensively than a next-generation coal- fired plant or a current-generation uranium-fueled nuclear reactor. -
Management of Reprocessed Uranium Current Status and Future Prospects
IAEA-TECDOC-1529 Management of Reprocessed Uranium Current Status and Future Prospects February 2007 IAEA-TECDOC-1529 Management of Reprocessed Uranium Current Status and Future Prospects February 2007 The originating Section of this publication in the IAEA was: Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Materials Section International Atomic Energy Agency Wagramer Strasse 5 P.O. Box 100 A-1400 Vienna, Austria MANAGEMENT OF REPROCESSED URANIUM IAEA, VIENNA, 2007 IAEA-TECDOC-1529 ISBN 92–0–114506–3 ISSN 1011–4289 © IAEA, 2007 Printed by the IAEA in Austria February 2007 FOREWORD The International Atomic Energy Agency is giving continuous attention to the collection, analysis and exchange of information on issues of back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle, an important part of the nuclear fuel cycle. Reprocessing of spent fuel arising from nuclear power production is one of the strategies for the back end of the fuel cycle. As a major fraction of spent fuel is made up of uranium, chemical reprocessing of spent fuel would leave behind large quantities of separated uranium which is designated as reprocessed uranium (RepU). Reprocessing of spent fuel could form a crucial part of future fuel cycle methodologies, which currently aim to separate and recover plutonium and minor actinides. The use of reprocessed uranium (RepU) and plutonium reduces the overall environmental impact of the entire fuel cycle. Environmental considerations will be important in determining the future growth of nuclear energy. It should be emphasized that the recycling of fissile materials not only reduces the toxicity and volumes of waste from the back end of the fuel cycle; it also reduces requirements for fresh milling and mill tailings. -
Background, Status and Issues Related to the Regulation of Advanced Spent Nuclear Fuel Recycle Facilities
NUREG-1909 Background, Status, and Issues Related to the Regulation of Advanced Spent Nuclear Fuel Recycle Facilities ACNW&M White Paper Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste and Materials NUREG-1909 Background, Status, and Issues Related to the Regulation of Advanced Spent Nuclear Fuel Recycle Facilities ACNW&M White Paper Manuscript Completed: May 2008 Date Published: June 2008 Prepared by A.G. Croff, R.G. Wymer, L.L. Tavlarides, J.H. Flack, H.G. Larson Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste and Materials THIS PAGE WAS LEFT BLANK INTENTIONALLY ii ABSTRACT In February 2006, the Commission directed the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste and Materials (ACNW&M) to remain abreast of developments in the area of spent nuclear fuel reprocessing, and to be ready to provide advice should the need arise. A white paper was prepared in response to that direction and focuses on three major areas: (1) historical approaches to development, design, and operation of spent nuclear fuel recycle facilities, (2) recent advances in spent nuclear fuel recycle technologies, and (3) technical and regulatory issues that will need to be addressed if advanced spent nuclear fuel recycle is to be implemented. This white paper was sent to the Commission by the ACNW&M as an attachment to a letter dated October 11, 2007 (ML072840119). In addition to being useful to the ACNW&M in advising the Commission, the authors believe that the white paper could be useful to a broad audience, including the NRC staff, the U.S. Department of Energy and its contractors, and other organizations interested in understanding the nuclear fuel cycle. -
Candu Fuel-Cycle Vision Xa9953247
CANDU FUEL-CYCLE VISION XA9953247 P.G. BOCZAR Fuel and Fuel Cycle Division, Chalk River Laboratories, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, Chalk River, Ontario, Canada Abstract The fuel-cycle path chosen by a particular country will depend on a range of local and global factors. The CANDU® reactor provides the fuel-cycle flexibility to enable any country to optimize its fuel-cycle strategy to suit its own needs. AECL has developed the CANFLEX® fuel bundle as the near-term carrier of advanced fuel cycles. A demonstration irradiation of 24 CANFLEX bundles in the Point Lepreau power station, and a full-scale critical heat flux (CHF) test in water are planned in 1998, before commercial implementation of CANFLEX fuelling. CANFLEX fuel provides a reduction in peak linear element ratings, and a significant enhancement in thermalhydraulic performance. Whereas natural uranium fuel provides many advantages, the use of slightly enriched uranium (SEU) in CANDU reactors offers even lower fuel-cycle costs and other benefits, such as uprating capability through flattening the channel power distribution across the core. Recycled uranium (RU) from reprocessing spent PWR fuel is a subset of SEU that has significant economic promise. AECL views the use of SEU/RU in the CANFLEX bundle as the first logical step from natural uranium. High neutron economy enables the use of low-fissile fuel in CANDU reactors, which opens up a spectrum of unique fuel-cycle opportunities that exploit the synergism between CANDU reactors and LWRs. At one end of this spectrum is the use of materials from conventional reprocessing: CANDU reactors can utilize the RU directly without re-enrichment, the plutonium as conventional mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel, and the actinide waste mixed with plutonium in an inert-matrix carrier. -
The Impact of Partitioning and Transmutation on the Risk Assesment of a Spent Nuclear Fuel
h/e/-se SE0608415 The Impact of Partitioning and Transmutation on the Risk Assesment of a Spent Nuclear Fuel Naima Amrani and Ahmed Boucenna UFAS University Physics Department Faculty of sciences Setif 19000 ALGERIA I. INTRODUCTION Nuclear power produces steadily a mass of spent fuel which contains a part from the short lived fission products, a significant amount of actinides and fission products with height toxicity and long half-lives. These nuclides constitute the long-term radiotoxic inventory which remains as a hazard far beyond human perception. The reprocessing recycles most of the major actinides (Uranium and Plutonium), while the Minor Actinides (MA) (mainly Neptunium: Np, Americium: Am and Curium: Cm) with half lives up to 2 million years remain with the fission products which are vitrified before being buried in deep repositories. Partitioning of the minor actinides and some of the fission products is an efficient method to reduce the long term radiotoxicity of the residual waste components with a factor proportional to the separation yield. The improved minor actinide nuclides would be recycled into a fuel cycle activities and returned to the reactor inventory of fissile and fertile material for transmutation to short lived isotopes. Progressively the MAs and some long-lived fission product (LLFP) could be burn up out. This option would reduce the long term contamination hazard in the high-level waste and shorten the time interval necessary to keep the actinides containing wastes confined in a deep geologic repository. Partitioning and Transmutation (P&T) is, in principal, capable of reducing the radiotoxicity period, while a number of practical difficult remain to be surmounted. -
Challenges for Decommissioning Policies
IAEA SAFETY RELATED PUBLICATIONS IAEA SAFETY STANDARDS Under the terms of Article III of its Statute, the IAEA is authorized to establish or adopt standards of safety for protection of health and minimization of danger to life and property, and to provide for the application of these standards. The publications by means of which the IAEA establishes standards are issued in the IAEA Safety Standards Series. This series covers nuclear safety, radiation safety, transport safety and waste safety, and also general safety (i.e. all these areas of safety). The publication categories in the series are Safety Fundamentals, Safety Requirements and Safety Guides. Safety standards are coded according to their coverage: nuclear safety (NS), radiation safety (RS), transport safety (TS), waste safety (WS) and general safety (GS). Information on the IAEA’s safety standards programme is available at the IAEA Internet site http://www-ns.iaea.org/standards/ The site provides the texts in English of published and draft safety standards. The texts of safety standards issued in Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish, the IAEA Safety Glossary and a status report for safety standards under development are also available. For further information, please contact the IAEA at P.O. Box 100, 1400 Vienna, Austria. All users of IAEA safety standards are invited to inform the IAEA of experience in their use (e.g. as a basis for national regulations, for safety reviews and for training courses) for the purpose of ensuring that they continue to meet users’ needs. Information may be provided via the IAEA Internet site or by post, as above, or by email to [email protected]. -
A Review of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Strategies and the Spent Nuclear Fuel Management Technologies
energies Review A Review of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Strategies and the Spent Nuclear Fuel Management Technologies Laura Rodríguez-Penalonga * ID and B. Yolanda Moratilla Soria ID Cátedra Rafael Mariño de Nuevas Tecnologías Energéticas, Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 28015 Madrid, Spain; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +34-91-542-2800 (ext. 2481) Received: 19 June 2017; Accepted: 6 August 2017; Published: 21 August 2017 Abstract: Nuclear power has been questioned almost since its beginnings and one of the major issues concerning its social acceptability around the world is nuclear waste management. In recent years, these issues have led to a rise in public opposition in some countries and, thus, nuclear energy has been facing even more challenges. However, continuous efforts in R&D (research and development) are resulting in new spent nuclear fuel (SNF) management technologies that might be the pathway towards helping the environment and the sustainability of nuclear energy. Thus, reprocessing and recycling of SNF could be one of the key points to improve the social acceptability of nuclear energy. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to review the state of the nuclear waste management technologies, its evolution through time and the future advanced techniques that are currently under research, in order to obtain a global vision of the nuclear fuel cycle strategies available, their advantages and disadvantages, and their expected evolution in the future. Keywords: nuclear energy; nuclear waste management; reprocessing; recycling 1. Introduction Nuclear energy is a mature technology that has been developing and improving since its beginnings in the 1940s. However, the fear of nuclear power has always existed and, for the last two decades, there has been a general discussion around the world about the future of nuclear power [1,2]. -
Lwv/L' I .D N. V/./ \Qev
Sept. 16, 1958 _ . I w, E, ABBOTT ETAL 2,852,460 FUEL-BREEDER FUEL ELEMENT FOR NUCLEAR REACTOR Filed Aug. 6, 1956 w//%////»;:/N \QE n.V////.//////////.Dv Lwv/l'I - ././4//. mm . 1M5.NLA TOT T T0 BY mm»/ /m m _ ATTORNEY , 2,852,460 United States Patent 0 . i Patented Sept. 16, 1958 1 23 power level, and in heterogeneous reactors this has been 2,852,460 ' set by the uranium temperature in the center of the rod._ To avoid this, and yet maintain a high ?ux, fuel elements FUEL-BREEDER FUEL ELEMENT FOR comprising a cluster of relatively small diameter uranium NUCLEAR REACTOR rods have been designed. However, this only aggravates William E. Abbott, East Pittsburgh, Pa., and Ralph fabricational and decontamination costs. Balent, Tarzana, Calif., assignors, by mesne assign An object of our invention, therefore, is to provide an ments, to the United States of America as represented improved fuel-breeder fuel element. .by the United States Atomic Energy Commission Another object is to provide a fuel-breeder fuel ele ment, wherein the fertile and ?ssionable materials are Application August 6, 1956, Serial No. 602,401 separated ‘and there is a minimum of cladding. 5 Claims. (Cl. 204-1931) Another object is to provide such a fuel element which permits fabrication and decontamination economies. Another object is to provide such a fuel element, where Our invention relates to an improved nuclear reactor 15 in a single, relatively large diameter fuel element is the fuel element, and more particularly to an improved fuel equivalent of a cluster of smaller diameter rods.