Plutonium and Minor Actinides incineration options using innovative Na-cooled fast reactors: Impacting on phasing-out and on-going fuel cycles

The flexibility of innovative Na-cooled fast reactors for burning Pu and/or Minor Actinides (MA) is investigated with respect to different fuel cycle strategies. Under phasing-out conditions, the burner systems are used for reducing to a minimum level the accumulated TRansUranic (TRU) inventory, whereas when continuous use of nuclear energy is envisaged (on-going case), burner systems may be dedicated to MA management only. As an example of a phasing-out case, the accumulated German TRU inventory (at 2022) is assumed to be transmuted in a chosen time period of 150 years. For this purpose, two different burner fast reactors concepts, developed at KIT, are deployed in a Partitioning and Transmutation based fuel cycle. The effects are analyzed in order to confirm the behavior expected by the neutronics studies and to provide a basis for further optimization of the scenarios with respect to a number of reactors, deployment paces and fuel compositions. Additionally the performance of the MA burner is assessed to provide an effective MA mass stabilization in case of a continuous use of nuclear energy. Preliminary results are compared with those of past studies based on the European Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.