Transmutation of cesium-137 using proton accelerator

Two transmutation methods of ¹³⁷Cs using a proton accelerator were evaluated in terms of the effective half life and the transmutation energy. One was the proton method which mainly used high energy proton spallation reaction for transmutation, and the other was the spallation neutron method which mainly used thermal neutron capture reaction. The transmutation energies and the effective half lives for the two transmutation methods were calculated by Monte Carlo simulation codes for particle transport, the NMTC/JAERI code and the MCNP code. The calculated transmutation energies were 510 MeV and 570 MeV for the spallation neutron method and the proton method, respectively, for an effective half life of 2 yr for ¹³⁷Cs.