THE EFFECT OF BURNUP AND SEPARATION EFFICIENCY ON URANIUM UTILIZATION AND RADIOTOXICITY

This paper addresses two fundamental issues of fuel cycle sustainability. The two primary issues of interest are efficient use of the natural uranium resource (cradle), and management of nuclear waste radiotoxicity (grave). Both uranium utilization and radiotoxicity are directly influenced by the burnup achieved during irradiation (transmutation related) and where applicable the separation efficiency (partitioning related). Burnup influences the in-growth of transuranics by breeding them into the fuel cycle. Transuranic breeding is virtually essential to resource sustainability because it increases utilization of naturally abundant fertile U-238. However, the direct consequence of this build-up is the in-growth of transuranic isotopes which generally increase the source of future geologically committed radiotoxicity. For scenarios involving recycle, separation efficiency influences the degree to which this transuranic source term is removed from active service in the fuel stream and made a disposal legacy of human activity.