Nuclear Waste Removal Using Particle Beams Incineration with Fast Neutrons

The management of nuclear waste is one of the major obstacles to the acceptability of nuclear power as a main source of energy for the future. TARC, a new experiment at CERN, is testing the practicality of Carlo Rubbia's idea to make use of Adiabatic Resonance Crossing to transmute long-lived fission fragments into short-lived or stable nuclides. Spallation neutrons produced in a large Lead assembly have a high probability to be captured at the energies of cross-section resonances in elements such as 99Tc, 129I, etc. An accelerator-driven sub-critical device using Thorium (Energy Amplifier) would be very effective in eliminating TRansUranic elements which constitute the most dangerous part of nuclear waste while producing from it large amounts of energy. In addition, such a system could transform, at a high rate and little energetic cost, long-lived fission fragments into short-lived elements.