Neutronics design for molten salt accelerator-driven system as TRU burner

Sugawara, Takanori  

Treatment of surplus plutonium has been one of the most important issues in the utilization of nuclear power in Japan. This study investigates a molten salt accelerator-driven system (ADS) to transmute transuranic (TRU) nuclides to address the issue. MARDS (Molten salt Accelerator Driven System) concept employs lead chloride (PbCl) as a fuel salt to achieve a hard spectrum. Since the fuel salt is used as a spallation target, a dedicated spallation target is not required in this concept. Furthermore, a beam window which is a boundary between an accelerator and subcritical core is designed to avoid touching the fuel salt. It mitigates the difficulties of the beam design for ADS. Neutronics calculation for the MARDS concept was performed for a condition of 400 MW thermal power with 800 MeV proton beam. The calculation results showed that the proton beam current was about 7 mA and about 4400 kg plutonium could be transmuted during 40-year operation.