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From research conducted at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

A vision of the future: partitioning & transmutation

About 1 percent of the spent fuel from nuclear power plants consists of plutonium, americium and other transuranic elements that must be isolated from the biosphere for hundreds of thousands of years. Separating these highly problematic elements from the spent fuel (partitioning) and converting them into shorter-lived or stable isotopes (transmutation) has so far been achieved only in the lab.

KALLA liquid metal lab
At the KALLA liquid metal lab at KIT, scientists are studying the behaviour of molten metals. Photo/Graphic: KIT/ M. Lober.

Scientists at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), led by Helmholtz expert Dr. Joachim Knebel, are working on a technical application based on these processes. At the KALLA liquid metal lab at KIT, they are examining the flow behaviour and corrosion characteristics of molten metals such as lead bismuth. These metals are used to cool surfaces such as the spallation beam window and fuel elements that are subject to high thermal loads. Furthermore, in cooperation with 36 international partners (including the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research, the Forschungszentrum Jülich and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf), the Helmholtz experts are helping to develop the safety-relevant components of the MYRRHA transmutation facility planned at the Belgian research centre in Mol. “If partitioning and transmutation can be achieved on a large scale, the high-level nuclear waste will only have to be stored for periods of around 2,000 years instead of for geologic periods spanning more than 200,000 years,” explains Joachim Knebel.

Antonia Rötger