(A) study on the low-and intermediate level radioactive wastes(LILW) management for the transmutation reactor-PEACER

Abstract

The spent nuclear fuel of current nuclear reactor is one of challenging issues for the continuous utilization of nuclear power. In order to solve this problem, geological disposal has been suggested and studied for decades. But, because of difficulty in finding its highly qualified sites, the partitioning and transmutation (P&T) technology have been introduced an alternative idea. P&T method of radioactive waste from spent fuel is considered more attractive because of high concern on the public protection and the difficulty in radioactive waste disposal site selection in Korea. Seoul National University (SNU) proposed a new transmutation concept named as PEACER to convert all the final waste into the class of low-level waste (LLW). In order to dispose the final waste from PEACER, The establishment of waste acceptance criteria for the LLW facility has to be considered first. According to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the human intrusion scenarios determine volumetric concentration limit. On the other hand, the radionuclide migration scenarios impose limit on the total inventory of a radionuclide disposed at the site by means of site specific analysis. The Methodology of NRC traced backward from the dose limit using the human intrusion scenario to find appropriate concentration. PEACER final waste has several special characteristics in establishing concentration limit. It consisted of TRU and LLFP and the mass ratio of each nuclide has been fixed by pyrochemical process. The previous study for waste from PEACER has focused on the feasibility of converting waste into LLW by pyroprocess technology and Practical value of decontamination factor (DF) to meet the concentration limit for class C waste of U.S. NRC. For this reason, the concentration limit for the final waste from PEACER is evaluated with the methodology for establishment of waste acceptance criteria. DF and LLFP removal efficiency to satisfy the derived concentration limit also are suggest...