Utilisation and Reliability of High Power Proton Accelerators
Workshop Proceedings, Daejeon, Republic of Korea, 16-19 May 2004
Accelerator-driven systems (ADS) are being considered for their potential use in the transmutation of radioactive waste. The performance of such hybrid nuclear systems depends to a large extent on the specification and reliability of high power accelerators, as well as the integration of the accelerator with spallation targets and sub-critical systems. At present, much R&D work is still required in order to demonstrate the desired capability of the system as a whole.
Accelerator scientists and reactor physicists from around the world gathered at an NEA workshop to discuss issues of common interest and to present the most recent achievements in their research. Discussions focused on accelerator reliability; target, window and coolant technology; sub-critical system design and ADS simulations; safety and control of ADS; and ADS experiments and test facilities. These proceedings contain the technical papers presented at the workshop as well as summaries of the working group discussions held. They will be of particular interest to scientists working on ADS development as well as on radioactive waste management issues in general.
Hybrid Power Extraction Reactor Hyper Project
Agence pour l'Energie Nucléaire
The KAERI ADS system is known as the HYbrid Power Extraction Reactor (HYPER) project. Research on this project began as a 10-year nuclear research programme in 1997. The conceptual design of the HYPER core is almost complete. HYPER is designed to transmute TRU and some fission products such as 129I and 99Tc. HYPER is a 1 000 MWth system and its keff is 0.98. The required current is 10.6 mA at BOC and 16.4 mA at EOC. The inventory of TRU is 6 510 kg at BOC, and 282 kg of TRU is transmuted per year. In the case of fission products, 129I and 99Tc are transmuted at the rates of 7 and 27 kg/yr, respectively. Pb-Bi is used as the coolant and target material. The average outlet temperature is 490°C when the inlet temperature of coolant is 340°C. The maximum cladding temperature turned out to be 570°C. It was found that a 2.5-mm thick beam window is needed to sustain the mechanical load. When the inlet velocity of Pb-Bi is 0.95 m/s, the maximum allowable current is 24.1 mA, which is greater than the required current of HYPER. U surrogate fuel was fabricated and tested. KAERI joined the MEGAPIE project in 2001 for Pb-Bi research. KAERI also installed the static Pb-Bi corrosion test device in 2003 and began experiments. KAERI will complete the construction of a Pb-Bi corrosion loop in 2004.