The new reactor would immediately burn up actinides, radioactive uranium isotopes. ❋ Unknown (2010)
MOX fuel has greater concentrations of "actinides," or radioactive elements and runs hotter than conventional fuel, so a shut down plant would have to deal with more "decay" or residual heat from fuel rods. ❋ Yuka Hayashi (2011)
It may be thorium fuel, or actinides which need 'incineration'. ❋ Unknown (2009)
Fission products are removed continuously and the actinides are fully recycled, while plutonium and other actinides can be added along with uranium-238 (238U) without the need for fuel fabrication. ❋ Unknown (2009)
Two alternative strategies are envisaged: (1) the plutonium and minor actinides being managed separately, with the latter confined to a small, dedicated part of the fuel cycle while plutonium is burned in fast reactors; and (2) the plutonium and minor actinides being managed together, providing better proliferation resistance but posing some technical challenges. ❋ Unknown (2009)
The other role of a subcritical nuclear reactor or ADS is the destruction of heavy isotopes, particularly actinides but also longer-lived fission products such as Tc-99 and I-129. ❋ Unknown (2009)
The use of thorium instead of uranium means that less actinides are produced in the ADS itself. ❋ Unknown (2009)
There is renewed interest in fast reactors due to their ability to fission actinides, including those which may be recovered from ordinary reactor used fuel. ❋ Unknown (2009)
As with the SFR, used fuel would be reprocessed on site and all actinides would be recycled to minimize production of long-lived radioactive wastes. ❋ Unknown (2009)
They will tend to have closed fuel cycles and burn the long-lived actinides now forming part of spent fuel, so that fission products are the only high-level waste. ❋ Unknown (2009)
The actinides are then placed back in the system for further transmutation by fission. ❋ Unknown (2009)
Commercial application of partitioning and transmutation (P&T), a process attractive particularly for actinides, is still a long way off since reliable separation is needed to ensure that stable isotopes are not transmuted into radioactive ones. ❋ Unknown (2009)
The radiotoxicity of these wastes would be relatively short-lived compared with the actinides (long-lived alpha-emitting transuranic isotopes) from a fission reactor. ❋ Unknown (2009)
More recently, there has been interest in transmuting the long-lived transuranic radionuclides (the actinides neptunium, americium and curium particularly) formed by neutron capture in a conventional reactor and reporting with the high-level waste. ❋ Unknown (2009)
Three variants are proposed: a 50-150 MWe type with actinides incorporated into a U-Pu metal fuel requiring electrometallurgical processing (pyroprocessing) integrated on site; a 300-1500 MWe pool-type version of this, and a 600-1500 MWe type with conventional MOX fuel and advanced aqueous reprocessing in central facilities elsewhere. ❋ Unknown (2009)
There is therefore the possibility of sustaining a fission reaction which can readily be turned off, and used either for power generation or destruction of actinides resulting from the U/Pu fuel cycle. ❋ Unknown (2009)
A fast neutron spectrum enables maximum fission with minimum build-up of new actinides due to neutron capture. ❋ Unknown (2009)
Lead-cooled fast reactors: The LFR is a flexible fast neutron reactor which can use depleted uranium or thorium fuel matrices, and burn actinides from LWR fuel. ❋ Unknown (2009)
The first stage will lead to demonstration fuel containing minor actinides being used in Japan's Monju reactor. ❋ Unknown (2009)
Ultimately, the burning of actinides means that overall radiotoxicity is significantly reduced, by 1000 years, and is less than that of the equivalent uranium ore. ❋ Unknown (2009)
