Abstract:
The half-life of most of minor actinides in spent fuel is longer and has long-term radioactive hazards to the environment. Partitioning-transmutation technology can eliminate radioactive hazard by separating minor actinides from the high level waste and transmuting into short-life or stable nuclide in the reactor. MCNP and SCALE are used to simulate transmutation characteristics of minor actinides in lead-cooled fast reactor. The three loading methods are as follows, the homogeneous mixing of minor actinides with fuel, forming transmutation rods and fuel pellets coating. The results show that
237Np,
241Am,
243Am and mixed minor actinides make the
keff decrease, simultaneous loading of
244Cm and
245Cm make
keff increase, and
245Cm significantly increase
keff. After loading mixed minor actinides with different mass, the core
keff decrease with the increase of loading, and the decreasing range from small to large are transmutation rod, uniform mixing and coating, respectively. The loading of different minor actinides is irradiated by uniform mixing in the core after 550 days,
237Np,
241Am and
243Am transmutation rate are always positive, the
241Am transmutation rate is the largest, while
244Cm and
245Cm transmutation rate are negative,
245Cm increases significantly, the total transmutation rate of minor actinides is about 14%. It can provide reference for minor actinides transmuted in the lead cooled fast reactor.