Research and development on accelerator-driven system for transmutation of long-lived nuclear waste at JAERI

Oigawa, Hiroyuki ; Sasa, Toshinobu   ; Takano, Hideki; Tsujimoto, Kazufumi ; Nishihara, Kenji  ; Kikuchi, Kenji; Kurata, Yuji; Saito, Shigeru   ; Futakawa, Masatoshi  ; Umeno, Makoto*; Ouchi, Nobuo ; Arai, Yasuo; Minato, Kazuo 

To reduce the burden on the final disposal of the nuclear waste, the Acclelerator-Driven System (ADS) which can transmute minor actinides efficiently has been studied in JAERI. The proposed ADS design is an 800MWth subcritical core with lead-bismuth coolant and minor-actinide nitride fuel driven by a neutron source of a superconductivity linear accelerator with 30MW and a lead-bismuth spallation target. To realize the ADS, many research and development are under way in the fields of the accelerator, the spallation target and the nitride fuel. Moreover, a new experimental facility, the Transmutation Experimental Facility, is proposed under a framework of the High-Intensity Proton Accelerator Project to study the feasibility of the ADS from physics and engineering aspects.