Review of research activities on partitioning and transmutation in Japan

Tsujimoto, Kazufumi 

The Government of Japan periodically formulates the Basic Energy Plan in accordance with an article in the Basic Act on Energy Policy that entered into force in 2002. The latest version, called the Strategic Energy Plan, was issued in April, 2014. The largest change from the previous versions must be the accident of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. In spite of the accident, the Plan defines the nuclear power as an important base-load power source as a low carbon and quasi-domestic energy source, contributing to stability of energy supply-demand structure, on major premise of ensuring of its safety. The Plan puts emphasis on the importance of activities to resolve the challenge of how to manage and dispose of spent fuel, as well as the Fukushima restoration, safety operation of nuclear plants, and public acceptance. As for the P&T technology, the Government will promote technology development on volume reduction and mitigation of degree of harmfulness of radioactive waste. Specifically, development of technologies for decreasing the radiation dose remaining in radioactive waste over a long period of time and enhancing the safety of processing and disposal of radioactive waste, including nuclear transmutation technology using fast reactors and accelerators, will be promoted by utilizing global networks for cooperation. Based on this new Strategic Energy Plan, research and development (R&D) on P&T are being accelerated in Japan. The Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) has been continuously implementing R&D on P&T technology to reduce the burden of the backend of the nuclear fuel cycle. The R&D on P&T in JAEA are basing on two kinds of concepts: one is the homogeneous recycling of minor actinide (MA) in fast reactors and the other is the dedicated MA transmutation, so-called double-strata strategy, using an accelerator-driven system (ADS). In this work, recent R&D activities based on these policies are briefly shown.