System Losses and Assessment Trade Study

This Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI) study has developed new analysis methods to examine old and new technology options toward the goal of improving fuel cycle systems. We have integrated participants and information from AFCI Systems Analysis, Transmutation Fuels, Separations, and Waste Form Campaigns in the Systems Losses and Assessment Trade Study. The initial objectives of this study were to 1) increase understanding of system interdependencies and thereby identify system trade-offs that may yield important insights, 2) define impacts of separations product purity on fuel manufacture and transmutation reactivity, 3) define impacts from transuranic (TRU) losses to waste, 4) identify the interrelationships involved in fuels and separations technology performance, and 5) identify system configuration adjustments with the greatest potential for influencing system losses. While bounding and analyzing this initial problem, we also identified significantly higher-level programmatic drivers with broad implications to the current fuel cycle research charter and the general issue of a DOE complex wide need for a comprehensive and integrated nuclear material management as addressed by the new DOE Order 410.2 titled “Management of Nuclear Materials”. The initial modeling effort developed in this study for a much smaller subset of material (i.e., commercial fuel) and a selected transmutation scheme (i.e., fast reactor recycling) is a necessary first step towards examining a broader set of nuclear material management options, dispositioning strategies and integrated waste management options including potential areas of research leverage. The primary outcome from this initial study has been an enhanced integration among Campaigns and associated insights and analysis methods. Opportunities for improved understanding between the groups abound. The above lanthanide-actinide example highlights the importance of evaluating options via integration across the Campaigns. Plans for Fiscal Year 2010 are being made in a coordinated fashion such that the knowledge gained from the research performed by the Campaigns can benefit on-going work of the study, and that improved understanding of the system relationships can be used to guide the specific research and development (R&D) activities within the Campaigns. In FY-10, the System Losses and Assessment Trade Study will carry-over activities from FY-09. We will continue to refine impurity and loss estimates and impurity limits on fuels by incorporating results from ongoing R&D. And we will begin work on an enhanced nuclear material management model to allow us to continue to improve our overall system understanding of the trade-offs between separations, fuel fabrication, waste forms, waste disposition, SNM losses, reactor performance, and proliferation resistance. In the future, we can also better understand how used fuel and other forms of remote-handled SNM can be better integrated into an overall nuclear material management program that will evolve for the DOE complex via Order 410.2 (DOE 2009)