In our design study, we find that the In-Zinerator can effectively
convert actinides into fission products. We have tracked the effectiveness
of transmuting actinides for 50 years in terms of the total
heat production from 64 metric tons of actinides as compared to
the heat production from the sum of the all the fission products
produced as a result of fissioning the 64 metric tons of actinides.
We find that after 10 years of cooling the heat load is decreased by
a factor of 10, and after 50 years the heat load is reduced by a factor
of 500. The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository capacity is
currently limited by heat load, so the reduction of heat production
by transmuting actinides into fission products could lead to much
more effective use of repository space. The ultimate goal of transmutation
technologies (along with reprocessing) is to obviate the
need for additional costly repositories for a couple hundred years.