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The purpose of this work is to investigate the implementation of nitride fuels containing little or no uranium in a fast -spectrum nuclear reactor to reduce the amount of plutonium and minor actinides in spent nuclear fuel destined for the Yucca Mountain Repository . A two tier recycling strategy is proposed . Thermal spectrum transmutation systems converted from the existing LWR fleet were modeled for the first tier , and the Japanese fast reactor MONJU was used for the fast -spectrum transmutation . The modeling was performed with the Monteburns code . Transmutation performance was investigated as well as delayed neutron fraction , heat generation rates , and radioactivity of the spent material in the short and long term for the different transmutation fuel cycles . A two -tier recycling strategy incorporating fast and thermal transmutation with uranium -free nitride fuel was shown to reduce the long -term heat generation rates and radioactivity of the spent nuclear fuel inventory . |
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