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PV: Plenarvorträge

PV XIII

PV XIII: Plenarvortrag

Donnerstag, 23. März 2000, 08:15–09:00, H 01

Nuclear Waste Transmutation ? — •Carlo Rubbia — CERN, CH-1211 Genève 23

A review will be given on various methods to transmute the most offending elements of Nuclear Waste from ordinary nuclear reactors. The long lasting radio-toxicity (millions of years !) of the ”ashes” of nuclear power are both Actinides and long lived Fission Fragments (FF). It is a fortunate circumstance that they represent only a few percent of the total fuel mass, the rest being either acceptably short lived or stable elements. Actinides can be eliminated through fissions induced for instance by the nuclear cascade of an high energy accelerator; long lived FF’s can be simultaneously transmuted using the neutrons from these fissions in a non critical (k < 1) arrangement. The powerful role of large cross section of nuclear resonances in order to speed up the process both for Actinides and FF’s will be illustrated. The result of this procedure, ideally to be carried out on (or near) the site of the power station, would result in an additional power recovery and, most important, a dramatic reduction of the heredity of radio-toxic waste left to future generations. Transmutation will also strongly reduce the risk that these materials may be eventually misused for ill-defined purposes (nuclear proliferation).