ADS Fission in a Molten Salt Core: Destroy Transuranics in Spent Nuclear Fuel, Close the Nuclear Fuel Cycle

by Peter McIntyre (Texas A&M University)

Friday 24 May 2013, 14:30 → 15:30 Europe/Zurich

500/1-001 - Main Auditorium (CERN)

The transuranic elements in spent nuclear fuel are the most enduring hazard of nuclear power. They have immense radiotoxicity, enough to jeopardize all life on Earth if they entered the biosphere, they have half-lives of hundreds of thousands of years, and each power reactor produces half a ton of transuranics per year. Innovations in pyroprocessing, accelerator physics, core neutronics, and actinide safeguards make it possible to make accelerator-driven subcritical fission in a molten salt core (ADSMS) with which the transuranics can be safely destroyed by fission at the same rate they are produced in conventional power reactors. In ADSMS intense proton beams are produced by strong-focusing cyclotrons and delivered into a molten salt core. The core operates with a criticality of 0.96 – the proton driver must supply 4% of the neutrons needed to sustain fission. The protons produce fast neutrons in the core by spallation and drive fission. The core is designed with the ultra-fast neutronics needed to fission the transuranics, and no failure mode can induce criticality. The ADSMS technology will be described. Applications of the accelerator technology for proton beam gantries for cancer therapy and for neutron damage studies will be presented. Coffee / tea will be served after the seminar in the 'Pas Perdus' ATS Seminars Organisers: H. Burkhardt (BE) T. Stora (EN), G. De Rijk (TE)

Slides TCADS-2_McIntyre.pdf