Investigation of nuclear waste transmutation in accelerator driven systems by using Monte Carlo method

ABSTRACTMasterINVESTIGATION OF NUCLEAR WASTE TRANSMUTATION IN ACCELERATORDRIVEN SYSTEMS BY USING MONTE CARLO METHODMehmet Emin KORKMAZİnönü UniversityThe Faculty of Science and ArtsDepartment of Physics94+xii Pages2005Supervisor : Prof. Dr. Başar ŞarerIn this study an Accelerator Driven System (ADS) is used to investigate thetransmutation of five long-lived nuclear wastes like 99Tc, 129I, 237Np, 238U, 239Pu into stable orshort-lived isotopes. There are 90 bars, their outer and inner radius and heights are 0,430 ,0,425 and 300 cm with hexagonal distributing in the cylinder vessel with inner radius of 98cm, outer radius of 100 cm and height of 300 cm. The spallation target is made of naturallead with an radius of 10 cm and height of 190 cm.The transmutation rate of long-lived nuclear waste, the neutron production number perbeam proton, neutron distribution in the cylinder vessel are analyzed for three proton beamenergies of 1, 2 and 3 GeV. A proton beam is performed with current of 10 mA and power of10 MW. Proton beam radius is 2 cm, incident beam is on the z axis. The liquid sodium is usedas coolant. The structure material is ferritic steel. Three dimentional nucleonic calculations iscarried out using Monte Carlo code MCNPX and ENDF/B-VI nuclear data. Calculated valuesof transmutation rates for 99Tc, 129I, 237Np, 238U, 239Pu are in agreement with the existingliterature results.KEYWORDS : Accelerator Driven System, Nuclear Waste, Transmutation, MCNPX,ENDF/B-VI