Concept of waste management and geological disposal incorporating partitioning and transmutation technology

Oigawa, Hiroyuki ; Nishihara, Kenji  ; Nakayama, Shinichi ; Morita, Yasuji  

To illustrate the benefit of the partitioning and transmutation (PT) technology, several types of the waste management and the geological disposal concepts incorporating PT was discussed in terms of the repository size required to emplace the wastes. It was found that the transmutation of Am, which is a long-term heat source, is effective to prevent the inflation of the repository size expected in the case of plutonium utilization. If we intend to reduce the repository size to a larger extent the partitioning of Sr and Cs followed by their long-term (100 - 300 years) storage should be adopted together with the transmutation of MA.