Objective
Cladding hulls and caps from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuels are one of the major sources of alpha-bearing solid waste.
6 potential schemes for cladding waste management have been studied: direct cementation, decontamination prior to cementation, rolling before cementation, rolling followed by embedding in graphite, compaction and melting in a cold crucible.
Considering the hypothetical waste arising from a 600 tonnes per annum reprocessing plant with defined discharge limits, the economic aspects of each option were also investigated. This included the plant, the transport and the disposal costs.
It was shown that transport and disposal in deep geological formations played a dominant role in the total management costs. Therefore, implementation of efficient volume reduction techniques nearly halves the cost compared to direct cementation. However, exhaustive decontamination of the zircalloy hulls can reduce costs, provided that the resulting waste complies with requirements for a cheaper disposal method.
Hull melting, with a volume reduction factor of 2.6 was one of the cheapest options but could release significant amounts of tritiated liquid effluents. Press compaction of the hulls resulted in a volume reduction factor of 2.0 but this route is not affected by waste discharge limits at the hull treatment site.
THIS STUDY IS A CONTRIBUTION TO A JOINT STUDY BETWEEN VARIOUS ORGANIZATIONS WHICH IS INTENDED TO DRAW UPON ECONOMIC AND RADIOLOGICAL CRITERIA IN ORDER TO ASSESS THE MAIN METHODS OF MANAGING OF MANAGING CLADDING FROM SPENT FUELS.THE SHARE ACCOUNTED FOR BY CEN/VALRHO IN THIS INSTANCE IS FIRST OF ALL AIMED AT ROUNDING OFF THE ECONOMIC STUDIES WHICH HAVE ALREADY BEEN CARRIED OUT BY ADJUSTING THE RESULTS OBTAINED VIA THE ADOPTION OF A SINGLE REFERENCE CONFIGURATION FOR THE LOCATION OF THE BUILDINGS AND RELATED SERVICES IN ORDER TO ASSESS THE IMPACT OF THE VARIOUS ALTERNATIVE METHODS OF CLADDING PROCESSING AND CONDITIONING.A SECOND TASK ASSIGNED TO CEN/VALHRO IS THEN TO SUMMARIZE ALL OF THE CONTRIBUTIONS FROM TASK/KAH,CEN-MOL AND NUKEN-ALZENAU IN SUCH A WAY AS TO GENERATE A FINAL REPORT COLLECTING TOGETHER THE MAIN RESULTS OF THE STUDY OBTAINED AT ECONOMIC AND RADIOLOGICAL LEVEL AND GENERATING ONE OR A NUMBER OF OPTIMIZED MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES.
THIS REPORT WILL BE DRAWN UP IN THE SAME FORMAT AS THAT FOR SEVERAL PCW SOLID PLUTONIUM WASTE MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES DEVISED BY THE COMMISSION IN 1986.
Fields of science
Topic(s)
Data not availableCall for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
30205 Bagnols-sur-Cèze
France