Comparison of Radioactive Waste Volumes from Single Used Nuclear Fuel Recycling and the Once-Through Nuclear Fuel Cycle

摘要

Evaluation of competing advanced nuclear technologies is useful to inform decisions concerning the prioritization of finite resources available for research, development and demonstration. Advanced nuclear technologies and nuclear fuel cycle (NFC) options offer improvements that are only fully realized when deployed and running at steady-state: however, such NFCs will not be implemented instantaneously. A potential transition from the current U.S. once-through NFC (OTC) to a modified-open NFC (MOC) involving a single recycle of plutonium and use of enriched reprocessed uranium has been modeled for a simplified energy demand scenario. The most limiting modeling constraint is the rate at which reprocessing capacity is brought into operation, which dictates the extent to which fuel can be recycled. This approach is different from many previous dynamic modeling efforts because the reality that reprocessing capacity will not be unlimited is addressed explicitly. Volumes of radioactive waste are estimated and tracked for each operation of the OTC and MOC for waste that can be disposed near the surface of the earth and waste that is assumed to require disposal within a geological repository. The volumes of these categories of waste generated by the MOC were 14% and 25% smaller than from the OTC, respectively, over the 50-year simulation.