Page 22 - Demo

nuclear power plants. This configuration allows for the best utilization of the neutrons: neutron capture by FP (e.g. 89Sr, 99Tc) is highest for slow neutrons. By placing the FP transmutation tank on the periphery, we ensure the incoming neutrons slow down via elastic scattering in the tanks filled with TRU.
(4) The FLiBe solution under the high energy (in the range between 1 to 10MeV) neutron irradiation does not act as particularly neutron absorptive and in fact beryllium is a neutron multiplier.
(5) By employing modular and scalable CAN laser we can achieve a large flux of neutrons.
By integrating these behaviors of neutronics and energetics, the transmutator is external neutron driven and thus subcritical.
The transmutator is also a net energy producer. The process begins with the highly efficient CAN laser delivering 100 keV deuterons striking tritium to generate 15 MeV neutrons, these neutrons in turn fission TRUto generate 200 MeV, lastly when keff=0.98, a neutron multiplication of 1/(1-keff) = 50 applies, which results in 200 MeV/100 keV * 50 = 100,000 fold enhancement before efficiency consideration.
We have conducted a preliminary study with the MCNP/CINDER90 [77] and MURE/MCNP [78] codes of idealized cases to see the basic characteristics of this concept. The geometry is show in Fig. 10 where R1 represents a radius of a cylinder containing the mixture of FLiBe and 6% TRU (Pu, Np, Cm and Am). R2 is a radius of a graphite reflector and the cylinder is 2 m long. The results are shown in Fig. 11. We assumed a 100 MW transmutator which translates to 1019 n/s or assuming keff=0.98, external source of ~1017 n/s. This non-optimized simulation shows the proof-of-concept of the transmutator incinerating 40 kg of TRU generated