Euradwaste '08 - EU Bookshop - Europa

Impact of partitioning and transmutation on nuclear waste management and the
associated geological repositories
Summary
Enrique M. González-Romero
CIEMAT, Madrid, Spain
Recent Eurobarometers show that radioactive waste management is perceived by the EU27
citizens as the main issue for nuclear energy sustainability. The nuclear research community,
both at EU and worldwide, has performed an intense R&D program during the last 15 years
on advanced fuel cycles, and the associated technologies of partitioning and transmutation
(P&T), to improve this sustainability. In this R&D the optimum utilization of resources and
the reduction of the final wastes to be disposed of have been the main driving motivations.
Reutilization of irradiated fuel in closed fuel cycles is the main option to address simultaneously
both objectives. However there are many ways to combine the available and new technologies
to close the cycle, each of them is described by an implementation scenario. The best
solution might be different for different countries or regions depending on their long term
strategy for nuclear energy deployment and the availability of technologies. Many of these
scenarios had been studied in great detail by international collaborations within the frameworks
of NEA/OCDE, IAEA, the Yucca Mountain and AFCI projects in the USA, of the
OMEGA project in Japan and a large EU program. The EU has financed, within the FP6, two
specific projects to investigate these scenarios, RED-IMPACT and PATEROS, and a number
of other R&D projects to develop the associated technologies.
This paper summarise the rationales behind the possible introduction of these advanced fuel
cycles with P&T, the advantages/difficulties of different types of deployment scenarios, and
the overall potential impact of these technologies on the nuclear waste management and the
associated geological repositories. The technologies of Partitioning and Transmutation and
the detail effects of P&T on the repository performance assessment will be addressed by other
presentations of the same session.
The most recent studies show potential value of P&T as a way to reduce the radiotoxic inventory
at long term and the heat source of the high level waste at short and medium term. This
last potentiality could allow significant enhancement of the final repositories capacity. On the
other hand, the studies show the small effect of these technologies on the dose levels to the
public from the repository, under its normal evolution conditions. Furthermore, the results of
the studies indicate that the new intermediate level waste of the advanced cycles need special
attention, as they could represent and important fraction of the final radiotoxic inventory and
volume to be disposed of in the final repository. Another issue requiring further investigation
is the timeline of new cycle deployment process and the advantages of using regional approaches.
Finally, large efforts are still needed to clarify the social effects and to prepare sufficiently
precise evaluations of the economical effects of the deployment of these advanced
cycles.
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