Accelerator driven systems for transmutation and energy production: challenges and dangers
-
R. Brandt
, W. Birkholz and I. A. Shelaev
Abstract
Accelerator Driven Systems (ADS) are an old technological idea: Relativistic proton accelerators deliver their beams onto massive heavy element targets, thus producing abundant neutron fluences. Placing this target into sub-critical nuclear fission assemblies is yielding substantial fission reactions, thus additional fission energy (Rubbia called such a system “Energy Amplifier”). This technology has recently attracted considerable attention due to advances in the construction of powerful accelerators. It allows the safe and cheap production of nuclear energy simultaneously with the destruction (Transmutation) of long lived radioactive waste, in particular plutonium and other minor actinides (neptunium and americium). The principles and the present-state-of-the-art are described, including first experiments to transmute plutonium this way. This technology needs, however, many more years of further “research and development” before large scale ADS's can be constructed. It may be even necessary to investigate the question, if all basic physics phenomena of this technology are already sufficiently well understood.
Kurzfassung
Beschleuniger-getriebene-Systeme sind eine alte technologische Idee in der Nuklearwelt: Relativistische Protonen werden auf massive Schwerelement-Targets gelenkt. Dabei entstehen erhebliche Neutronenflüsse. Wenn diese Neutronen in das Innere eines “Unterkritischen Reaktors” geleitet werden, lösen diese weitere Kernspaltungen aus, ergo, zusätzliche Spaltenergie wird frei (Rubbia nennt diese Systeme “Energy Amplifier” oder “Energieverstärker”). Diese Technologie ist in letzter Zeit durch Fortschritte im Bau sehr leistungsfähiger Beschleuniger in das Blickfeld der Öffentlichkeit gelangt, denn sie erlaubt die sichere und billige Produktion der Kernenergie zusammen mit der gleichzeitigen Zerstörung (Transmutation) des langlebigen radioaktiven Abfalles, insbesondere von Pu, Np und Am. Der gegenwärtige Stand der Entwicklung wird beschrieben, einschließlich erster Experimente zu derartiger Transmutation von Pu. Aber es wird noch vieler Jahre intensiver Forschung und Entwicklung bedürfen, bevor im größeren Umfang diese neue Technologie industriell einsetzbar ist. Es erhebt sich sogar die Frage, ob alle Fundamentalaspekte dieser Technologie schon vollständig verstanden werden.
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© 2004, Carl Hanser Verlag, München
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- Summaries
- Technical Contributions/Fachbeiträge
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Articles in the same Issue
- Contents/Inhalt
- Contents
- Summaries/Kurzfassungen
- Summaries
- Technical Contributions/Fachbeiträge
- Sensitivity analysis of the Peach Bottom Turbine Trip 2 experiment
- Theoretical and experimental investigations into natural circulation behaviour in a simulated facility of the Indian PHWR under reduced inventory conditions
- A new data-condensation method based on multidimensional minimisation
- Current international activities to increase fire protection knowledge for nuclear power plants
- Simple formulas for conservatively calculating the fuel rod cladding strains due to RIA
- Accelerator driven systems for transmutation and energy production: challenges and dangers
- A method for in-situ quantification of oxygen in oil using fast neutron activation analysis
- The time-dependent effect of the biological component of 137Cs soil contamination
- Letter to the Editor
- Remarks on pulsed neutron activation
- On the critical radius of reflected spheres