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In view of the lack of progress in implementing the radioactive waste disposal in geological repositories, the Partitioning and Transmutation (P&T) strategy has been put forward: Ø to assist in responding to the adverse public perception that the safety of repositories cannot be guaranteed for tens of thousands of years, Ø to extract a large part of the energy bearing component of the waste thereby reducing the radio-toxicity and the waste volume, thus effectively increasing the capacity of repositories, and Ø to assist in reducing the high temperatures of the waste in the first 200 years that otherwise would restrict the packing capacity of the repository. P&T is likely to ease the final repository requirements. In addition, P&T both will contribute to the sustainability of nuclear energy in those countries that pursue this source of energy, and will assist in combating global warming. With this background, in the Euratom Sixth Framework Program (FP6), one specific targeted research project on the study of the impact of P&T (RED-IMPACT) and two integrated projects: (i) EUROPART (partitioning) and (ii) EUROTRANS (transmutation) have been launched. The latter is the subject of the present contract. EUROTRANS benefits not only from the technological developments and scientific progress achieved in Europe during FP5, but also from worldwide co-operation (OECD/NEA, IAEA, USA, Japan, ISTC etc.) in the field of P&T. The FP5 R&D results in the areas of preliminary design studies of an experimental ADS, low-power coupling of an accelerator to the Masurca zero power reactor made sub-critical for the purpose of the MUSE programme, studies on transmutation fuels, heavy liquid metal (HLM) technology and high-energy nuclear data are available as a basis for the advancement of this Integrated Project (IP). The work of the project is structured into one management and five technical Domains (DM) that are further subdivided into work packages (WP), tasks (T) and subtasks (ST). Our group is taking part in the domain 4 - NUDATRA (Nuclear data for transmutation of nuclear waste). The goal of this domain is to improve nuclear data evaluated files and models which involves sensitivity analysis and validation of simulation tools, low and intermediate energy nuclear data measurements, nuclear data libraries evaluation at low and medium energies, and high energy experiments and modeling.
Administrative details about EUROTRANS in FP6:
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