Solution stack for burning plutonium and transmutation of neptunium-237 or americium-241

Abstract

The invention discloses a solution reactor used for the plutonium combustion and the neptunium-237 or the americium-241 transmutation. The solution reactor adopts plutonium or plutonium and americium in the spent fuel of the nuclear power plant as the fuel, and adopts neptunium-237 or americium-241 as the target. By adopting the solution reactor, the minor actinides which have long half life and high toxicity and can not be stored for a long time, such as the neptunium-237 or the americium-241, can be changed into nuclides with short half life and low toxicity through transmutation. Because the solution reactor adopts the spent fuel and can generate electricity at the low temperature, the cost-effectiveness and the security are high; the neutron provided by the plutonium combustion can extract plutonium-238 from the neptunium-237 solution target as the isotope battery, thereby the inexpensive energy is provided; the americium-242m extracted from the americium-241 solution target can be widely applied to the aerospace industry and the medical industry.

Description

technical field [0001] The invention relates to a nuclear reactor, in particular to a solution reactor for plutonium incineration and neptunium-237 (or americium-241) transmutation. Background technique [0002] The development of nuclear power inevitably involves the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. On the issue of spent fuel reprocessing, transmutation can be considered as a process in which a nuclide changes its nuclear structure and becomes another nuclide. From the perspective of spent fuel processing, it refers to the transformation of plutonium, other actinides, and fissile nuclides with long half-lives into other nuclides with good properties. Because neptunium-237 or americium-241 and other minor actinide nuclides have long half-lives and high toxicity, they cannot be stored for a long time, and transmutation must be used to form nuclides with short half-lives and low toxicity. According to the physical characteristics that transmutation consumes a large amount...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

Since the realization of transmutation consumes a large amount of neutrons, taking a fast reactor as an example, the transmutation of neptunium-237 (or americium-241) will inevitably reduce the conversion ratio of uranium-238 to plutonium-239, and expensive devices are used to perform neptunium-237 (or americium-241) transmutation is not economical

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