Actinide and Fission Product Partitioning and Transmutation: Ninth Information Exchange Meeting, Nîmes, France, 25-29 September 2006

The global energy context pleads in favour of a sustainable development of nuclear energy since thedemand for energy will likely increase, whereas resources will tend to get scarcer and the prospect ofglobal warming will drive down the consumption of fossil fuel sources.How we deal with radioactive waste is crucial in this context. The production of nuclear energy inFrance has been associated, since its inception, with the optimisation of radioactive waste management,including the partitioning and the recycling of recoverable energetic materials. The public’s concernregarding long-term waste management led the French government to prepare and pass the Law ofDecember 1991, requesting in particular the study for fifteen years of solutions to minimising evenfurther the quantity and the hazardousness of final waste, via partitioning and transmutation.At the end of these fifteen years of research, it is considered that partitioning techniques which havebeen validated on real solutions are at disposal. Indeed, aqueous process for separation of minoractinides from the PUREX raffinate has been brought to a point where there is reasonable assurancethat industrial deployment can be successful. A key experiment has been the kilogramme-scalesuccessful trials in the CEA-Marcoule Atalante facility in 2005 and this result, together with theresults obtained in the frame of the successive European projects, constitutes a considerable stepforward. For transmutation, CEA has conducted programmes proving the feasibility of the eliminationof minor actinides and fission products: fabrication of specific targets and fuels for transmutation testsin the HFR and Phénix reactors, neutronics and technology studies for critical reactors and ADSdevelopments. Scenario studies have also allowed assessing the feasibility, at the level of cycle andfuel facilities, and the efficiency of transmutation in terms of the quantitative reduction of the finalwaste inventory depending of the reactor fleet (PWR-FR-ADS).Important results are now available concerning the possibility of significantly reducing the quantityand the radiotoxicity of long-lived waste in association with a sustainable development of nuclearenergy. As France has confirmed its long-term approach to nuclear energy, the most effectiveimplementation of P&T; of minor actinides relies on the fast neutron Gen IV systems which aredesigned to recycle and manage their own actinides. The perspective to deploy a first series of suchsystems around 2040 supports the idea that progress is being made: the long-term waste would only bemade up of fission products, with very low amounts of minor actinides.In this sense, the new waste management law passed by the French parliament on 28 June 2006,demands that P&T; research continue in strong connection with Gen IV systems and ADS development,allowing to assess the industrial perspectives of such systems in 2012 and to put into operation atransmutation demo facility in 2020.