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Radiation Protection Dosimetry Advance Access published online on September 23, 2009
Radiation Protection Dosimetry, doi:10.1093/rpd/ncp176
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

RADIO-TOXICITY OF SPENT FUEL OF THE ADVANCED HEAVY WATER REACTOR

S. Anand*, K. D. S. Singh and V. K. Sharma

Health Physics Division, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai 400085, India

* Corresponding author: sanand{at}barc.gov.in

Received February 18, 2009, amended June 3, 2009, accepted August 25, 2009

The Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) is a new power reactor concept being developed at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai. The reactor retains many desirable features of the existing Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR), while incorporating new, advanced safety features. The reactor aims to utilise the vast thorium resources available in India. The reactor core will use plutonium as the make-up fuel, while breeding 233U in situ. On account of this unique combination of fuel materials, the operational characteristics of the fuel as determined by its radioactivity, decay heat and radio-toxicity are being viewed with great interest. Radio-toxicity of the spent fuel is a measure of potential radiological hazard to the members of the public and also important from the ecological point of view. The radio-toxicity of the AHWR fuel is extremely high to start with, being ~104 times that of the fresh natural U fuel used in a PHWR, and continues to remain relatively high during operation and subsequent cooling. A unique feature of this fuel is the peak observed in its radio-toxicity at ~105 y of decay cooling. The delayed increase in fuel toxicity has been traced primarily to a build-up of 229Th, 230Th and 226Ra. This phenomenon has been observed earlier for thorium-based fuels and is confirmed for the AHWR fuel. This paper presents radio-toxicity data for AHWR spent fuel up to a period of 106 y and the results are compared with the radio-toxicity of PHWR.


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