Reducing radiotoxicity in the long run

Melting behaviour of americium-doped uranium dioxide

“…This transmutation fuel, designated as AmBB (americium-bearing blankets) would ultimately be irradiated in the periphery of FNR (fast neutron reactor) cores. The radiotoxicity and heat load of ultimate nuclear waste would thus be decreased as well as the ecological footprint of deep geological repositories [2,3]. In this context, several studies have been dedicated to U 1Àx Am x O 2±d compounds, not only to investigate synthesis methods [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] and assess their behaviour under irradiation in reactors [4,7,12,13], but also to determine their structural and thermophysical properties, the latter remaining scarcely known [14][15][16][17][18][19][20].…”

Minor actinides impact on basic safety parameters of medium-sized sodium-cooled fast reactor

“…The standard deviation can be determined using the error propagation formula: (9) It is worth to mention that the larger negative value of the sodium void reactivity (SVR), physically leads to more positive insertion of the reactivity. It is opposite effect than for other reactivity effects and it could lead to confusion.…”

“…However, there are also some very long-lived fi ssion products. Nevertheless, their impact on the overall radiotoxicity is practically negligible in long terms [9]. Burning of FPs in burner reactors is considered as impractical in current perspective [2].…”

“…The crucial minor actinide is americium, as it has the largest contribution to radiotoxicity in the period of 1000 to 100 000 years after irradiation. The reduction of Am inventory is believed to be the most important purpose of transmutation [7][8][9][10][11][12].…”

Effect of sintering technique on mechanical property and chemical durability of Ce0.5Pr0.5PO4 ceramics

“…Considering the long-term safety aspects of geological disposal, minor actinides (Np, Am and Cm) are of particular concern due to their high toxicity and long half-lives [1,2]. Extensive studies are performed in several countries on the immobilization of minor actinides in highly durable matrices [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22].…”