Investigations of lead-bismuth cooled accelerator-driven system

Sugawara, Takanori  ; Nishihara, Kenji  ; Tsujimoto, Kazufumi ; Sasa, Toshinobu   ; Obayashi, Hironari  ; Kurata, Yuji; Oigawa, Hiroyuki 

The Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) has been conducting research and development on an accelerator-driven system (ADS) to transmute minor actinides (MAs) included in high-level waste (HLW) into short-lived nuclides. The ADS proposed by JAEA is a lead bismuth eutectic (LBE) cooled-tank-type ADS. The system consists of a high-intensity proton accelerator with 1.5GeV beam energy, a subcritical core with 800MW thermal power and an LBE spallation target placed at a center of the subcritical core. Since the ADS is a hybrid system of an accelerator and a nuclear reactor, there are various inherent issues in the research and development of the ADS. In this study, two important issues are introduced from the viewpoint of the ADS plant investigation and the latest results are presented.