Self-consistent nuclear energy system

Self-Consistent Nuclear Energy System (SCNES). 2672... 

Rogozkin BD, Stepennova NM, Proshkin AA (2003) Atommya Energiya 95(3) 208-221 (in Russian) Saito M (2005) Multicomponent self-consistent nuclear energy system protected plutonium production by transmutation of minor actinides. In Workshop on future nudear systems and fuel cydes. Karlsruhe, Germany... 

An important feature of the above potential uses of fast reactors is that in all cases the reactor cannot be considered separately form the entire nuclear fuel cycle. In any future developments the technology of the fabrication and reprocessing of the fuel and the treatment of the waste will interact with that of the reactor, and the economics and environmental impact of the whole fuel cycle, not just the reactor, will determine commercial e q)loitation. The Japanese "Self-Consistent Nuclear Energy System" (SCNES) illustrates this approach. The objective of the SCNES is a nuclear power facility, incorporating reactors and fuel cycle plants, which consumes nothing but U-238 and emits nothing but electric power, waste heat, and useful radioactive materials. This is a vision for the middle of the next century at the earliest, but in the nearer future ideas of this type are likely to become increasingly influential. 

Under not too unusual circumstances, calculations on molecules with a high density of levels near the Fermi level converge badly or not at all with the Fermi occupation rule. The most simple conceivable system with that behavior contains just two levels, say a and b and one electron. If a is occupied, the self-consistent potential lowers b below a and vice versa. If a and b belong to the same symmetry representation, which is trivially the case for completely nonsymmetric nuclear conformations (Ci), a hybrid orbital can be found which minimizes the total energy self-consistently. It is illuminating to study the behavior of the calculations in this case with a model. One finds that the electrostatics leads to a shift in the levels depending on the population n of the level e . Defining eab = ea — eb ... 

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