A Trade Study for Waste Concepts to Minimize HLW Volume
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1124-Q01-03
A Trade Study for Waste Concepts to Minimize HLW Volume Dirk Gombert1, Joe Carter2, Bill Ebert3, Steve Piet1, Tim Trickel4, and John Vienna5 1
Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Falls, ID, U.S.A. Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, Aiken, SC, U.S.A. 3 Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, U.S.A. 4 North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, U.S.A. 5 Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, U.S.A. 2
ABSTRACT Advanced nuclear fuel reprocessing can partition wastes into groups of common chemistry. This enables new waste management strategies not possible with the plutonium, uranium extraction (PUREX) process alone. Combining all of the metallic fission products in an alloy and the balance as oxides in glass minimizes high level waste (HLW) volume. Implementing a waste management strategy using state-of-the-art combined waste forms and storage to allow radioactive decay and heat dissipation prior to placement in a repository makes it possible to place almost 10x the HLW equivalent of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) in the same repository space. However, using generic costs based on preliminary studies for waste stabilization facilities and separations modules, this analysis shows that combining the non-actinide wastes and using only one glass waste form is the most cost-effective. INTRODUCTION A new generation of aqueous nuclear fuel reprocessing separates fuel into several fractions, thereby partitioning wastes into groups of common chemistry. Advanced separations make possible recycling of long-lived actinides in nuclear fuel so they can be transmuted into shorterlived wastes [1]. This also enables development of specialized waste forms to more efficiently immobilize groups of radionuclides to reduce volume, manage decay heat, and enhance overall disposal system performance. Conventional wisdom suggests minimizing HLW volume is desirable, but logical extrapolation of this concept suggests that at some point the cost of reducing volume further may cease to be cost-effective. Currently, HLW from SNF reprocessing is immobilized in glass containing waste as oxides. Several fission product elements (noble metals Ru, Rh, Pd) have limited solubility, resulting in low waste loading and production of more glass.a Matching the waste form to the target waste chemistry allows greater waste loading with comparable or improved performance. The most efficient combination may be an oxidized form like glass for readily oxidized elements and a metallic form for reduced species. This trade-study was designed to juxtapose a combined waste form baseline waste treatment scheme supporting advanced separations with alternate waste combinations to evaluate the relative cost-benefit. The five waste streams considered were: 1. Undissolved solids (UDS): containing Mo, Zr, Ru, Pd, Rh, and Tc in filtered solids
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An unpublished limit of 3 wt% noble metal oxides is used by Areva at Le Hague, France and it Rokkasho, Japan; a lower limit is used at the Defense Waste Processing Plant at Savannah River, USA.
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