Benefits of Fast Neutrons: CANDU Fuel Creation, Waste Elimination and Clean Power

Abstract

At the current rate of mining and exploitation of Canada’s uranium resources, our economical uranium (< US$120/kg) as fuel for thermal reactors, including CANDUs, will be exhausted in about 35 years. At the same time it is estimated that Canada’s highly radioactive long-term nuclear fuel waste will approach 100,000 tonnes of used CANDU fuel. However, the addition of fast-neutron reactors (FNRs) to our CANDU fleet as small modular FNRs or larger plants with recycling facilities can re-utilize this waste as fuel to extract over 100 times more energy from it. At the same time this approach can eliminate the long-term radiotoxic transuranic heavy atoms from the stored waste and produce fissile fuel for the CANDU fleet for many centuries. With recycling through FNRs no further long-term transuranic waste is created, leaving primarily short-lived fission products as the only fuel residue.