Characterization of Individual Fission Products in Terms of Their Production and Transmutation

In order to establish a simple and common basis which can be referred for the specific studies on the fission products (FP) transmutation and its strategies, the general characteristics of the dominant individual FPs in terms of their production and transmutation in the fast reactor have been studied with an ideal model in the present paper. The potential hazard of each nuclide in long-term utilization of nuclear energy in human society has been quantitatively evaluated. During utilization of fission energy, two short half-life FPs, ⁹⁰Sr and ¹³⁷Cs, almost determine the total toxicity of FP nuclides in spite of the effort of transmuting them in fast reactors. The innovative transmuters (such as High Flux Reactor, Accelerator-driven system and Fusion Neutron Source) are needed to reduce these 2 toxicities. In case of 1000-year fission energy utilization with transmutation in fast reactors, the total toxicity of FP nuclides except ¹²⁶Sn go down below the level of ²³⁸U toxicity consumed. The more detailed study of transmutation of ¹²⁶Sn is a very important in future. However, in the case of 10,000-year fission energy utilization with transmutation in fast reactor, total toxicities of all FP nuclides go down below the level of ²³⁸U toxicity consumed.