Development of a fast reactor for minor actinides transmutation, 1; Overview and method development

Takeda, Toshikazu*; Usami, Shin ; Fujimura, Koji*; Takakuwa, Masayuki*

The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan has launched a national project entitled "technology development for the environmental burden reduction" in 2013. The present study is one of the studies adopted as the national project. The objective of the study is the efficient and safe transmutation and volume reduction of minor actinides with long-lived radioactivity and high decay heat contained in high level radioactive wastes by using sodium cooled fast reactors. We are developing MA transmutation core concepts which harmonize efficient MA transmutation with core safety. To accurately design the core concepts we have improved calculation methods for estimating the transmutation rate of individual MA nuclides, and estimating and reducing uncertainty of MA transmutation. The overview of the present project is first described. The method improvement is presented with numerical results for a minor-actinide transmutation fast reactor.