Assessment of the technical viability of reactor options for plutonium disposition

Various reactor concepts for the disposition of surplus Pu have been proposed by reactor vendors; not all have attained the same level of technical viability. Studies were performed to differentiate between reactor concepts by devising a quantitative index for technical viability. For a quantitative assessment, three issues required resolution: the definition of a technical maturity scale, the treatment of ''subjective'' factors which cannot be easily represented in a quantitative format, and the protocol for producing a single technical viability figure-of-merit for each alternative. Alternatives involving the use of foreign facilities were found to be the most technically viable