Study on reduction of potential radiotoxicity for spent fuel by using HTGR

Fukaya, Yuji   ; Kunitomi, Kazuhiko ; Ogawa, Masuro

A study on reduction of potential radiotoxicity for spent fuel by using High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors (HTGRs) have been performed. Unlike Partitioning and Transmutation (P&T), the reactor concept is investigated from the viewpoint of reduction of the radiotoxicity generation itself. To reduce the radiotoxicity, U, which generates Pu, Am and Cm, should be excluded. Therefore, we proposed HTGR fueled by new concept fuels with alternative fuel matrix instead of U. Those are Yttria Stabilized Zirconia (YSZ) and thorium, and the fissile material is Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) with the enrichment of 93%. With the HEU, the radiotoxicity can be significantly reduced, and the cooling time to decay to a natural uranium level can be shorted down to approximately 800 years. Fuel integrity and proliferation resistance can be remained by the dilution using YSZ, and neutronic characteristics of self-regulation is remained by the loading of erbium. The fuel can generate heat as same amount as ordinary uranium fuel. The electricity generation cost is as cheap as ordinary GTHTR300. It is concluded that the proposed reactor concept can reduce the cooling time less than 1% from 100 thousand years to a 800 years without additional technology development.