Turn the nuclear backend into research frontier!

Oigawa, Hiroyuki 

Placing the nuclear backend as the most important issue of research and development of nuclear power, it is proposed to invest research and development resource to this issue in a concentrated manner as the Backend Frontier Program. In the field of the high-level waste (HLW), three main activities are proposed: the partitioning technology to be added to the reprocessing, the transmutation technology for long-lived nuclides, and the disposal technology for newly-produced wastes from these processes. In the field of the low-level waste (LLW) produced by operation and decommissioning of nuclear facilities, three main activities are proposed: the decommissioning technology to reduce the amount of the radioactive waste, the fabrication technology for various wastes, and the disposal technology for LLW. It is important to figure out the scheme by which safety can be secured with the most reasonable way by consolidating the activities in these two fields.