THE STUDY OF IRRADIATED PWR STRUCTURAL MATERIALS CHARACTERISTICS IMPORTANT FOR MANAGEMENT AND RECYCLING

Consideration of structural materials management and recycling is of great importance for a sustainable development ensuring. Structural materials that are utilized in nuclear power engineering are mostly expensive and their recycling can be economically profitable. Management and recycling aspects influence the reduction of costs and ecological risks related with irradiated materials disposal. Without materials recycling, the problem of resource shortage for utilization in the fields that are not related to nuclear power engineering could arise. The main barrier for structural material recycling is a potential necessity for more complicated technology of this material reprocessing than of the material achieved from environment. These complexity and necessity depend on the structural material radioactive properties. The purpose of the study is to estimate radioactive characteristics of these materials and to compare them with nuclear material management regulations. The subject of inquiry is an active core of a pressurized water reactor, the predominant reactor type in the world at present. To solve the problem, identification of isotopes with dangerous radioactive characteristics has been made. Computational model and nuclear computation of structural materials isotopic composition change have been performed. The results and their analysis will be presented.