Nuclear transmutation of long-lived nuclides with laser Compton scattering; Quantitative analysis by theoretical approach

Takai, Shizuka ; Hagino, Koichi*

One of the major problems of fuel cycle is the disposal of high-level radioactive waste which contains long-lived nuclides and high-decay heating nuclides. Transmuting such nuclides into short-lived or stable nuclides is one possible way to resolve this problem. Neutron capture reactions have been proposed for transmutations of such fission products. However, this transmutation method is not effective for nuclides with small neutron capture cross sections such as Cs. Recently, the photo-neutron (,n) reactions via giant dipole resonance with laser Compton scattering -rays has been suggested as an alternative method for nuclear transmutations. In this paper, we investigate in detail the effectiveness of the transmutation of Cs quantitatively. For the transmutation of Cs of 1g with photon flux /s, /s and /s for 24 hours, 10%, 70% and 99% reduction of the initial amount of Cs is theoretically possible.