Radioactive waste produced from Integral Fast Reactor: Comparisons to Light-Water Reactors

The main goal of this study was to compare between radioactive waste that produced from Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) and Light-Water Reactors (LWR). The radioactive waste produced from IFR reactors either have a short half life, which means that they decay quickly and become relatively safe, or a long half life, which means that they are only slightly radioactive. The primary argument for pursuing IFR-style technology today is that it provides the best solution to the existing nuclear waste problem because breeder reactors can be fueled from the waste products of existing reactors as well as from the plutonium used in weapons. Depleted uranium (DU) waste can also be used as fuel in IFR reactors. IFR-style reactors produce much less waste than LWR-style reactors, and can even consume other waste as fuel. The total volume of fission products is 1/20th the volume of used fuel produced by a light water plant of the same size, and considered to be waste. 70% of fission products are either stable or have half lives less than one year. Technetium-99 and iodine-129, which constitute 6% of fission products, have very long half lives but can be transmuted to isotopes with very short half lives (15.46 seconds and 12.36 hours) by neutron absorption within a reactor, effectively destroying them. Zirconium-93, another 5% of fission products, could in principle be recycled into fuel-pin cladding, where it doesn't matter that it is radioactive. The remaining high level waste from reprocessing, about 200kg per GWe-yr, is less radiotoxic than mined uranium within 400 years. The radioactivity of the waste decays to levels similar to the original ore in about 200 years. (author)