Pretreatment of radioactive waste by Partitioning and Transmutation (P&T) in Accelerator-Driven Systems (ADS) has been mentioned as an approach to significantly reduce the requirements and risks associated with a – still necessary – final repository for decades. We show that the technological concept is still very much the same as the one proposed decades ago and discuss possible additional revenue from radioisotope production in transmutation facilities.

Several countries consider partitioning and transmutation (P&T) to be a useful supplement to the widely accepted storage of high-level radioactive waste in deep geological disposal. In addition to the technical feasibility, implementation of a P&T fuel cycle poses significant proliferation risks.

Some alternative reactor concepts are frequently discussed in the literature as relevant for the disposal of high-level radioactive waste. We present results on the technological readiness of and research and development on those reactor concepts from a project commissioned by the Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management on novel reactors.