56 research outputs found
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Overall Assessment of Actinide Partitioning and Transmutation for Waste Management Purposes
A program to establish the technical feasibility and incentives for partitioning (i.e., recovering) actinides from fuel cycle wastes and then transmuting them in power reactors to shorter-lived or stable nuclides has recently been concluded at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The feasibility was established by experimentally investigating the reduction that can be practicably achieved in the actinide content of the wastes sent to a geologic repository, and the incentives for implementing this concept were defined by determining the incremental costs, risks, and benefits. Eight US Department of Energy laboratories and three private companies participated in the program over its 3-year duration. A reference fuel cycle was chosen based on a self-generated plutonium recycle PWR, and chemical flowsheets based on solvent extraction and ion-exchange techniques were generated that have the potential to reduce actinides in fuel fabrication and reprocessing plant wastes to less than 0.25% of those in the spent fuel. Waste treatment facilities utilizing these flowsheets were designed conceptually, and their costs were estimated. Finally, the short-term (contemporary) risks from fuel cycle operations and long-term (future) risks from deep geologic disposal of the wastes were estimated for cases with and without partitioning and transmutation. It was concluded that, while both actinide partitioning from wastes and transmutation in power reactors appear to be feasible using currently identified and studied technology, implementation of this concept cannot be justified because of the small long-term benefits and substantially increased costs of the concept
Vietnam - Sweden bilateral trade relations and the driving forces behind them
Trade liberalization and the Vietnamese Government’s attempt to open up the market and integrate it with the global economy has had a great impact on the country’s trade sector. The trades flow between Vietnam and other trading partners including Sweden continues to grow. In particular, Vietnam’s export to Sweden has increased from nearly 230 to 900 million USD in a time span of three years from 2010-2013. This has raised an interesting question considering the determinants, i.e. the factors behind this rapid growth. Using a number of internationally recognized theories aiming to explain international trade, we have analyzed the trade of recent years between Sweden and Vietnam and identified a number of governing key factors behind it. In Vietnam, an abundance of natural resources and a substantial yet low cost labor force, together with the country’s accession to the WTO, significant market expansion and a high amount of Foreign Direct Investments leading to, among other things, technological innovation, have all been key in determining the country’s trade with Sweden. In Sweden, the key determinants have been an abundance in capital, both human and physical.
However we believe the later factors do have a greater impact on Vietnam-Sweden trade relation and suggest that the Vietnamese Government should take this into consideration while pursuing and implementing its trade policy towards Sweden
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