Nuclear fuels and structural materials in the era of new reactor designs

摘要

An initial strategy of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership was to separate spent fuel into usable and waste materials, with the usable materials being recycled in advanced burner reactors (ABR) when commercially available, and the residual waste going to a geologic repository. Now there is another option, according to Carter "Buzz" Savage, deputy director of technology for the Department of Energy's GNEP program. Savage was the first speaker at the opening plenary session of the embedded topical meeting, Nuclear Fuels and Structural Materials for the Next Generation Nuclear Reactors. That option, Savage said, incorporates the use of existing light-water reactors to recycle usable materials, with the trans-uranic element-bearing materials reprocessed later in ABRs. "That would be an immediate step to put the U.S. back into the reprocessing of used fuel and recycling of the plutonium" from LWRs, he said.