Читать книгу Management of Radioactive Waste - Jean-Claude Amiard - Страница 32

About 90% of radioactive waste comes from electricity generation. This waste is of three types. The first category includes waste of various origins (also called type A waste); these are chemical products, work clothes, tools, etc., generally of low radioactivity (18,000 t.yr^-1 in France). The second group contains technological waste related to the atomic fission process (also called type B waste); this is fairly highly radioactive waste, consisting in particular of metal structures and zircaloy “shells” (an alloy of zirconium and tin, about 1,800 t.yr^-1 in France). The last group includes waste resulting directly from the fission process of the atom itself (also called type C waste); these are fission products and actinides (approximately 63 t.yr^-1 and 1.9 t.yr^-1, respectively, in France), i.e. volumes of 100–240 m³.yr^-1. Still for France, each year the nuclear industry produces more than 1,000 tons of spent fuel that is sent to the Orano (previously Areva) plant at La Hague. A portion is processed each year to extract the plutonium (1%) and uranium (95%) and to condition the residue (4%). This is the stage that produces by far the most radioactive waste [AMI 13]. The plutonium is reused in the manufacturing of new fuels (MOX), which are composed of a mixture of plutonium and uranium oxides. There are currently 2,140 tons of irradiated MOX fuel, while 424 tons are loaded into 900 MW reactors [AND 20c].

The quantities of low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste and the tonnage of spent nuclear fuel generated vary widely among the nuclear technologies (Table 1.8.).

Table 1.8. Quantities of radioactive waste (m3.GW-1) and spent fuel (t.GW-1.yr-1) generated by the various types of nuclear reactors in operation (source: [OJO 14]). LWR: light-water reactor; BWR: boiling water reactor; PWR: pressurized water reactor; WWER: water-water energy reactor; RBMK: Reaktor Bolshoy Moshchnosti Kanalnyi, CANDU: Canadian dioxide uranium; Magnox: magnesium non-oxidizing; AGR: advanced gas-cooled reactor

	LWR	BWR	PWR	WWER	RBMK	CANDU	Magnox	AGR
LLW and ILW	100	260	130	320	850	80	1,740	400
Spent fuel	25	22	20	28	42	145	240	29