• Energy Research

Abstract Nuclear energy generates 30% of the electricity in the EU. Still, different countries of EU27 have very different attitudes towards the future use of nuclear energy for electricity generation or other uses. However, independently of the political decision of continuation or phase out of the nuclear energy, all countries using nuclear energy to generate electricity are facing the question of the final management of its spent nuclear fuel and other high level radioactive wastes. Partition and Transmutation are emerging technologies that when integrated in advanced fuel cycles can strongly influence on the final wastes from the nuclear industry and its management. A review of the progress on the understanding of their real potentialities and main conclusions from a large number of international studies are presented in this paper. In particular, the conclusions from the main NEA working groups and the EURATOM RED-IMPACT project are jointly discussed. In this paper the emphasis is put on the effects of Partitioning and Transmutation on the inventory reduction, the heat source reduction and its implications to the repository capacity and on the performance assessment of the final repository.

The $^{238}$U to $^{235}$U fission cross section ratio has been determined at n_TOF up to $\sim$1 GeV, with two different detection systems, in different geometrical configurations. A total of four datasets have been collected and compared. They are all consistent to each other within the relative systematic uncertainty of 3-4%. The data collected at n_TOF have been suitably combined to yield a unique fission cross section ratio as a function of the neutron energy. The result confirms current evaluations up to 200 MeV. A good agreement is also observed with theoretical calculations based on the INCL++/Gemini++ combination up to the highest measured energy. The n_TOF results may help solving a long-standing discrepancy between the two most important experimental dataset available so far above 20 MeV, while extending the neutron energy range for the first time up to $\sim$1 GeV.

The cross section of the reaction 197Au(n,γ ) was measured with the time-of-flight technique at the n TOF (neutron time-of-flight) facility in the unresolved resonance region between 5 and 400 keV using a pair of C6D6 (where D denotes 2H) liquid scintillators for the detection of prompt capture γ rays. The results with a total uncertainty of 3.9%–6.7% for a resolution of 20 bins per energy decade show fair agreement with the Evaluated Nuclear Data File Version B-VII.0 (ENDF/B-VII.0), which contains the standard evaluation. The Maxwellianaveraged cross section (MACS) at 30 keV is in excellent agreement with the one according to the ENDF/B-VII.0 evaluation and 4.7% higher than the MACS measured independently by activation technique. Structures in the cross section, which had also been reported earlier, have been interpreted as being due to clusters of resonances.

The prompt decay constant method and the area-ratio (Sjostrand) method constitute the reference techniques for measuring the reactivity of a subcritical system using Pulsed Neutron Source experiments (PNS). However, different experiments have shown that in many cases it is necessary to apply corrections to the experimental results in order to take into account spectral and spatial effects. In these cases, the approach usually followed is to develop different specific correction procedures for each method. In this work we discuss the validity of prompt decay constant method and the area-ratio method in the Yalina-Booster subcritical assembly and propose a general correction procedure based on Monte Carlo simulations.

The CERN Neutron Time-Of-Flight (n TOF) facility is well suited to measure small neutron- induced ssion cross sections, as those of subactinides. The cross section ratios of natPb and 209Bi relative to 235U and 238U were measured using PPAC detectors. The fragment coincidence method allows to unambiguously identify the ssion events. The present experiment provides the rst results for neutron-induced ssion up to 1 GeV for natPb and 209Bi. A good agreement with previous experimental data below 200 MeV is shown. The comparison with proton-induced ssion indicates that the limiting regime where neutron-induced and proton-induced ssion reach equal cross section is close to 1 GeV.