Managing fusion high-level waste—A strategy for burning the long-lived products in fusion devices

Fusion devices appear to be a viable option for burning their own high-level waste (HLW). We propose a novel strategy to eliminate (or minimize) the HLW generated by fusion systems. The main source of the fusion HLW includes the structural and recycled materials, refractory metals, and liquid breeders. The basic idea involves recycling and reprocessing the waste, separating the long-lived radionuclides from the bulk low-level waste, and irradiating the limited amount of HLW in a specially designed module to transmute the long-lived products into short-lived radioisotopes or preferably, stable elements. The potential performance of the new concept seems promising. Our analysis indicated moderate to excellent transmutation rates could be achieved in advanced fusion designs. Successive irradiation should burn the majority of the HLW. The figures of merit for the concept relate to the HLW burn-up fraction, neutron economy, and impact on tritium breeding. Hopefully, the added design requirements could be accommodated easily in fusion power plants and the cost of the proposed system would be much less than disposal in a deep geological HLW repository. Overall, this innovative approach offers benefits to fusion systems and helps earn public acceptance for fusion as a HLW-free source of clean nuclear energy.