Reduction on high level radioactive waste volume and geological repository footprint with high burn-up and high thermal efficiency of HTGR

Fukaya, Yuji   ; Nishihara, Tetsuo 

Reduction of High Level Waste (HLW) and footprint in a geological repository due to high burn-up and high thermal efficiency of High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR) has been investigated. A helium-cooled and graphite-moderated commercial HTGR was designed as a Gas Turbine High Temperature Reactor (GTHTR300), and the features are significantly high burn-up of approximately 120 GWd/t, high thermal efficiency around 50%, and pin-in-block type fuel. The pin-in-block type fuel was employed to reduce processed graphite volume in reprocessing, and effective waste loading method for direct disposal is proposed by applying the feature in this study. As a result, it is found that the number of canisters and its repository footprint per electricity generation can be reduced by 60% compared with LWR representative case for direct disposal because of the higher burn-up, higher thermal efficiency, less TRU generation, and effective waste loading proposed in this study for HTGR. For disposal with reprocessing, the number of canisters and its repository footprint per electricity generation can be reduced by 30% compared with LWR because of the 30% higher thermal efficiency of HTGR.