A fundamentally new scheme of the electronuclear method based on nuclear relativistic technol ogies is discussed; this scheme includes the formation and utilization of a limiting hard neutron spectrum in the volume of the deep subcritical active core. It is demonstrated that the development and application of nuclear relativistic technologies can be promising for solving the problem of utilizing spent nuclear fuel and global challenges of power production. The results of the first experiments performed at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research indicate the realistic character of the main principles of relativistic nuclear technologies, in particular, the growth of beam power amplification by a factor of 2 for a deuteron beam irradiating a mas sive (315 kg) uranium target with the beam energy increasing from 1 to 4 GeV.

Neptunium-237 samples were irradiated in a spallation neutron field produced in accelerator-driven system (ADS) setup QUINTA. Five experiments were carried out on the accelerators at the JINR in Dubna - one in carbon (C6+), three in deuteron, and one in a proton beam. The energy in carbon was 24 GeV, in deuteron 2, 4 and 8 GeV, respectively, and 660 MeV in the proton beam. The incineration study method was based on gamma-ray spectrometry. During the analysis of the spectra several fission products and one actinide were identified. Fission product activities yielded the number of fissions. The actinide (Np-238), a result of neutron capture by Np-237, yielded the number of captures. The main goal of this work was to find out if and how the incineration rate depended on parameters of the accelerator beam.

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