Research on Spent Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Regeneration for Accelerator Driven Advanced Nuclear Energy System

Abstract

Spent nuclear fuel reprocessing is the key step of the nuclear fuel cycle. It also restricts the sustainable development of nuclear power. With the help of external neutron source in an accelerator driven advanced nuclear energy system(ADANES), spent nuclear fuel reprocessing only needs to remove some volatile fission products and neutron poisons, such as rare elements. Moreover, it is not necessary to separate the long-lived minor actinides Np, Am and Cm finely. These minor actinides can be refabricated as new nuclear fuels together with uranium dioxide for burn, transmutation, breeding, and power production in the accelerator driven advanced nuclear energy system. Based on this, our group proposed a technical route for spent nuclear fuel reprocessing and regeneration of accelerator driven advanced nuclear energy system, including high-temperature oxidation pulverization and volatilization, selective dissolution separation, and fuel regeneration. The recent research of our group is summarized, which has a great significance for implementation of accelerator driven advanced nuclear energy system.

Keywords

• accelerator driven advanced nuclear energy system
• spent nuclear fuel reprocessing
• simulated spent nuclear fuel
• high-temperature oxidation pulverization and volatilization
• selective dissolution separation
• nuclear fuel microspheres