Progress in Nuclear Energy 65 (2013) 50e55

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Progress in Nuclear Energy

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LWR spent fuel transmutation with fusion-fission hybrid reactors

J.L. François a, *, J.J. Dorantes a, C. Martín-del-Campo a, J.J.E. Herrera b
a
Departamento de Sistemas Energéticos, Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Paseo Cuauhnáhuac No. 8532, Col. Progreso, C.P. 62550, Jiutepec,
Morelos, Mexico
b
Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, A.P. 70-543, 04511 México, D.F., Mexico

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this paper the transmutation of light water reactors (LWR) spent fuel is analyzed. The system used for
Received 18 June 2012 this study is the fusion-fission transmutation system (FFTS). It uses a high energy neutron source pro-
Received in revised form duced with deuterium-tritium fusion reactions, located in the center of the system, which is surrounded
8 February 2013
by a fission region composed of nuclear fuel where the fissions take place. In this study, the fuel of the
Accepted 12 February 2013
fission region is obtained from the recycling of LWR spent fuel. The MCNPX Monte Carlo code was used to
setup a model of the FFTS. Two fuel types were analyzed for the fissile region: the mixed oxide fuel
Keywords:
(MOX), and the inert matrix fuel (IMF). Results show that in the case of the MOX fuel, an important Pu-
Fusion-fission transmutation system
Nuclear waste transmutation
239 breeding is achieved, which can be interesting from the point of view of maximal uranium utili-
Spent fuel management zation. On the contrary, in the case of the IMF fuel, high consumption of Pu-239 and Pu-241 is observed,
Fusion-fission hybrid reactors which can be interesting from the point of view of non-proliferation issues. A combination of MOX and
IMF fuels was also studied, which shows that the equilibrium of actinides production and consumption
can be achieved. These results demonstrate the versatility of the fusion-fission hybrid systems for the
transmutation of LWR spent fuel.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Concerning the fusion-fission transmutation systems (FFTS),

One of the open issues of the nuclear technology is the strategy
followed at the back-end of the fuel cycle. It is clear that the closed
cycle is preferable than the open cycle in terms of sustainability.
Very closely related with this issue is the strategy followed for the
spent fuel management of light water reactors (LWR). The radio-
toxicity of the spent fuel of LWR is first dominated by the short half-
life fission products, and later by the long lived isotopes: the acti-
nides (transuranics). Several investigations are under way around
the world aimed at transmuting the actinides in order to reduce
their radiotoxicity and volume. Transmutation in LWR has been
studied by: Franceschini and Petrovi c, 2008; Fukaya et al., 2009;
Núñez-Carrera et al., 2008; Seino and Sekimoto, 1998; Youinuo and
Vasile, 2005; Zabunog lu, 2008, in fast reactors: Broeders et al.,
2000; Massara et al., 2009; Nicolaou and Tsagas, 2006; Salvatores
et al., 2009; Slessarev, 2006, 2008, in accelerator driven systems:
Cometto et al., 2004, 2008; Marsodi et al., 2002; Park et al., 2003;
Salvatores, 2005; Sasa et al., 2004; Westlen and Seltborg, 2006.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ52 5556223016.
E-mail addresses: juan.louis.francois@gmail.com (J.L. François), JDC_4201@
yahoo.com.mx (J.J. Dorantes), cecilia.martin.del.campo@gmail.com (C. Martín-del-
Campo), herrera@nucleares.unam.mx (J.J.E. Herrera).
studies are in progress by different research groups around the
globe. Different concepts are under study: the tokamak-based high-
power-density compact fusion neutron source (Kotschenreuther
et al., 2009), the reversed-field pinch toroidal magnetic configu-
ration as a neutron source (Fiksel et al., 2009), the axisymmetric
mirror as a neutron source (Ryutov, 2005), the laser based fusion
test facility (Obenschain et al., 2009), the fusion-fission hybrids
driven by heavy-ion inertial fusion (Meier et al., 2003), the driven
subcritical fission research reactor using a cylindrical inertial
electrostatic confinement neutron source (Miley et al., 2002),
among others.
The FFTS has been theoretically designed based on experimental
fusion reactors. The reactor studied in this work relies on its simple
design, small size and relative low expected cost. It uses a high
energy neutron source, which produces neutrons from the
deuterium-tritium fusion reaction. This source is located in the
center of the system, and is surrounded by a fission region
composed of fuel where the fission reactions take place.
In this paper the well-known MCNPX (Monte Carlo N-Particle
eXtended, versión 2.6.0) (Pelowitz, 2008) code was used to setup a
model of the FFTS, and for studying the transmutation capabilities
of this type of device, in particular for LWR spent fuel management.
Two fuel types were analyzed: the mixed oxide fuel (MOX: Mixed
OXide), and the inert matrix fuel (IMF).

0149-1970/$ e see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pnucene.2013.02.005
 J.L. François et al. / Progress in Nuclear Energy 65 (2013) 50e55 51

Table 2
Fuel-coolant composition of the fission region in the FFTS.

IMF (at/b-cm) MOX (at/b-cm)

237
Np/1.68  104 235
U/5.42  105
239
Pu/1.628  103 238
U/2.142  102
240
Pu/7.17  104 238
Pu/8.335  105
241
Pu/4.470  104 239
Pu/1.51  103
242
Pu/1.910  104 240
Pu/7.86  104
241
Am/1.45  105 241
Pu/3.10  104
243
Am/4.61  105 242
Pu/2.38  104
244
Cm/1.43  105 237
Np/1.70  104
C-natural/3.76  103 241
Am/1.43  104
Si-natural/3.76  103 243
Am/5.93  105
23
Na/1.738  102 244
Cm/1.96  105
16
O/4.95  102
Fig. 1. Schematics of the fusion-fission transmutation system (based on 23
Na/2.541  102
Kotschenreuther et al., 2009).

2.2. Fuel description in the fission region

2. Hybrid fusion-fission system
The spent fuel of actual light water reactors can be a valuable
Thermonuclear fusion reactors have been under development product, since through chemical processes, like PUREX, it is
for more than fifty years, based on the deuterium from sea water possible to recover important elements like plutonium, americium,
and tritium produced from the lithiumeneutrons reaction, with the curium, etc.
hope of having a clean and sustainable source of energy. The In our model, the fuel and the coolant (sodium) are homoge-
deployment of these systems, at the commercial scale, has been nously mixed in annular regions (rings). This is a good approxi-
very slow due to their technological complexity. In the meantime mation in fast reactors where the neutrons mean free path is quite
the hybrid fusion-fission systems, based on the Tokamak concept, large. The composition of the fuel-coolant used in this work is
as source of fast neutrons for the fission region, look like a more shown in Table 2. The information of the IMF was obtained from
feasible technological option. It is worthy to mention that, nowa- Nieto et al. (2009), and corresponds to the composition of the ac-
days, the Tokamak fusion reactor is the most studied and advanced tinides obtained from the recycling of PWR spent fuel with a
technology. discharge burn-up of 40 GWd/t. The MOX data was obtained from
Guzmán (2008), and corresponds to the composition of the acti-
2.1. Fusion-fission hybrid system description nides obtained from the recycling of BWR spent fuel with a
discharge burn-up of 48 GWd/t. In order to produce the MOX fuel
In 2009 the Institute for Fusion Studies of the University of Texas composition, the actinides were mixed with depleted uranium
at Austin proposed the fusion-fission transmutation system, FFTS obtained from the tails of the enrichment process with a concen-
(Kotschenreuther et al., 2009), as a strategy for the destruction of tration of 0.25% (weight percent) 235U.
transuranic nuclear waste. The FFTS is based on the Tokamak
concept, and is a fusion-fission hybrid reactor with a central 2.3. FFTS model
compact fusion neutron source (CFNS) surrounded by a subcritical
fission region composed of transuranic elements obtained from the The Fig. 2 depicts the model that we developed for the FFTS. This
reprocessing and recycling of LWR spent fuel (see Fig. 1). The fuel is an approximate model where some structures (cables, detectors,
placed in the subcritical fission region can be MOX or IMF. The etc.) are not considered. From the center to the periphery the
coolant is sodium in order to have a neutron spectrum favorable to
fast fissions.
The CFNS produces high energy neutrons (14 MeV) generated by
the deuterium-tritium reaction, and some 2.45 MeV neutrons
produced by the reaction between two deuterium nuclei. The
“combustion” of deuterium and tritium inside the CFNS, in stable
operation, forms a toroid around the central column (see Fig. 1).
The materials of the FFTS used in this work are shown in Table 1.
This model does not consider components like cables, detectors,
magnetic fields, fuel cladding, etc., since, for the scope of our work,
it is assumed that they do not perturb the neutronic behavior of the
source.

Table 1
Materials description of the FFTS (Kotschenreuther et al., 2009).

Structure Material/density
Central column Lead/11.34 g/cm3
Plasma Deuterium-tritium/1.3  1020 cm3
Source Neutrons (14 MeV)
Void O (21%) e N (79%)/1  1020 g/cm3
Coolant Sodium/0.9291 g/cm3
Fuel IMF/MOX (Table 2)
External cover Lead/11.34 g/cm3
Fig. 2. Conceptual model of the fusion-fission transmutation system.
52 J.L. François et al. / Progress in Nuclear Energy 65 (2013) 50e55

Fig. 3. Cross section view of the FFTS model in MCNPX.

following elements can be identified: the central column, then the
plasma, with the neutron source inside (in yellow); afterwards, a
void region surrounds the source; then, the fuel region (in red),
followed by a coolant zone (in green), and finally the reflector and
shielding.
As it was already mentioned, the simulations were performed
with MCNPX-2.6.0. Figs. 3 and 4 show the MCPX model of the FFTS,
the cross section and the lateral view, respectively.
It is important to mention that due to the complexity of the
model, it had to be run in the Kambalam supercomputer of the
National University of Mexico (UNAM, 2010). This is a “HP Cluster
Platform 4000” with 1368 cores (AMD Opteron processors of
2.6 GHz, with two cores each processor), with a process capacity of
7.113 billion of mathematical operations per second, 3000 GB of
total RAM memory, and a system of massive storage of 160 TB.
3. Results
Several cases were analyzed, which are shown in Table 3. One
case with pure MOX, one with pure IMF, and two with a

Fig. 4. Lateral view of the FFTS model in MCNPX.

 J.L. François et al. / Progress in Nuclear Energy 65 (2013) 50e55 53

Table 3
Study cases depending on the fuel type arrangement.

Case Number of rings (lateral view) Fuel

Sodium

1 MOX MOX

50 cm

Sodium
Refrig.
IMF IMF IMF
2 IMF

10cm 4.75cm 7.75cm 5 cm 7.75cm 4.75cm 10 cm

Sodium
Refrig.
IMF MOX IMF
3 IMF/MOX/IMF

10cm 6cm 2cm 14cm 2cm 6cm 10cm

Sodium
Refrig.
MOX IMF MOX
4 MOX/IMF/MOX

10cm 10cm 1.5cm 7cm 1.5cm 10cm 10cm

combination of MOX and IMF. The cases 2, 3 and 4 were designed in

order to achieve a typical LWR fuel discharge burn-up of 48 GWd/T
(see Fig. 5a) with a tolerance of 3% dK for uncertainty in the cal-
culations. The criterion for Case 1 (pure MOX) was different, since
the reactivity behavior along the burn-up is different to the other
cases. In Case 1, the criterion was just to have an initial reactivity
excess, again, to take into account calculation uncertainties.
Certainly, looking at Fig. 5b, this case could have had a lower initial
reactivity excess, however, the reactivity behavior along the burn-

Fig. 5. a. Keff versus burn-up (0e50 GWd/T) for the studied cases. b. Keff versus burn-
up (0e200 GWd/T) for the MOX case. Fig. 6. Mass balance of the plutonium isotopes and U-238.
54 J.L. François et al. / Progress in Nuclear Energy 65 (2013) 50e55
Fig. 7. Mass balance of the minor actinides isotopes and U-235.
up would be the same. It is worthy to say that for Case 1, criticality
(Keff ¼ 1) is not achievable with the three rings configuration; only
with one ring, this condition (criticality at zero burn-up) was
obtained.
Fig. 5a shows the behavior of the neutron multiplication factor
(Keff) versus burn-up. It can be seen that the curves for the cases
with IMF (or IMF plus MOX) have the typical behavior of the
thermal fission reactors; it means Keff decreases linearly as burn-
up increases. However, for the case with only MOX fuel the
behavior is totally different: Keff increases as irradiation goes on
(see Fig. 5b), due to the breading effect in the 238U at fast neutron
spectrum. After some time Keff decreases as the fuel depletes and
there is not more breeding.
Figs. 6 and 7 show the isotopic mass balance in grams, for all the
study cases. This is the mass difference for isotope “i”: the mass at
the end of irradiation (EOI) minus the mass at the beginning of
irradiation (BOI). In these figures a negative value means that the
isotope is consumed, while a positive value means that the isotope
is produced. The legends must be read from left to right and from
top to bottom, following the bars in the graph from left to right. The
plutonium isotopes and 238U are shown in Fig. 6, and the minor
actinides isotopes (Np, Am, Cu) and the 235U are presented in Fig. 7.
From Fig. 6 it can be highlighted the important consumption of
238
U for the pure MOX case. This high consumption produces
important amounts of 239Pu: 767.7 kg/FPY (Full Power Year), which,
as it can be seen in Fig. 5a and b is responsible for the increment of
Keff; afterwards, the 239Pu will start fissioning and Keff will
decrease. The conversion ratio1 (CR) for this case (taking into ac-
count the main fissile isotopes: 235U, 239Pu and 241Pu), is 1.9; which
represents an important breeding ratio. The 235U is consumed at a
rate of 52.5 kg/FPY and the 241Pu at a rate of 351 kg/FPY.
From Fig. 6, it can be also observed that for the case of pure IMF,
the main fissile isotopes, 239Pu and 241Pu, are consumed. In this case
there is not uranium, and obviously there is not 239Pu breeding. In
this case, the transmutation rate2 (TR), calculated after one full
power year, is equal to 1.9%, which represents a consumption of
1
The conversion ratio is defined as the ratio between the average rate of fissile
isotopes production and the average rate of fissile isotopes consumption.
2
The transmutation rate of actinides (Np, Pu, Am, Cu) is defined as the fractional
difference of the final mass and the initial mass.
373.9 kg/FPY of actinides. The plutonium isotopes consumption is
equal to 460 kg/FPY (of which 310.5 kg/FPY are of 239Pu), mean-
while the 241Am is produced at a rate of 177.9 kg/FPY.
For the case with two rings with IMF (external rings) and one
ring with MOX (central ring), it can be noticed that, since there is
more IMF than MOX, the consumption of 239Pu is lower than in the
case with only IMF. For this case, the TR is 1.3%/FPY, which rep-
resents a consumption of 114.2 kg/FPY of actinides and 263.3 kg/
FPY of 239Pu.
Finally, for the case with three rings, in which the central one
has IMF, and the external two rings have MOX fuel, it can be seen
that, since there is more MOX than IMF, there is consumption of
238
U, but the production of 239Pu is less important than the case
with pure MOX, since some 239Pu consumption takes place in the
IMF region. The conversion ratio is as low as 0.18, which represents
a 239Pu production of 56.2 kg/FPY. For this case, the transmutation
rate is equal to 0.3%, which represents a consumption of 114.2 kg/
FPY of actinides.
4. Conclusions
With the development of a relatively simple model with
MCNPX, interesting results were obtained for the study of actinides
transmutation in a fusion-fission hybrid system, showing the
versatility that can be achieved with this kind of systems for
designing strategies for the management of LWR spent fuel.
When only MOX fuel is used, an important 239Pu breeding is
achieved (767.7 kg/FPY) with a conversion factor as high as 1.9; this
allows the operation of the system with very long cycles and burn-
ups. When only IMF is used, which is a fertile free fuel, the result is
the opposite; in this case a high consumption rate of 239Pu and
241
Pu is achieved, with a transmutation rate of 1.9%/FPY, which
represents an actinides consumption of 310.5 kg/FPY.This is favor-
able in terms of non-proliferation. When a combination of IMF and
MOX fuel is used, equilibrium between actinides production and
consumption is achieved. The transmutation rate decreases
to 1.3%/FPY for the case with two IMF rings and one MOX ring,
compared with 1.9%/FPY for the pure IMF case. The conversion
rate decreases to 0.18 for the case with two rings of MOX and one
ring of IMF, compared with 1.9 for the pure MOX case.
Future works can explore the feasibility of the thorium fuel cycle
and the utilization of different coolants like lithium, helium and
carbon dioxide.
Acknowledgments
To Dionisio Telésforo-Reyes for his advice in the utilization of
MCNPX 2.6.0. To the National Autonomous University of Mexico for
the availability of the Kambalam supercomputer and for the sup-
port provided through the research project PAPIIT IN113213.
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