This is why electricity in France is much cheaper than in Germany. Nuclear energy is paradoxically is most environmental frienly and cheapest electricity source.
@@cleverorb5914 That is where transmutation would come in. You can basically accelerate the natural radioactive decay. That would decrease the radioactivity of the material and reduce its half-life to only some hundred years.
@@Joel-ee4yh It makes me fu****g mad. The green party we have in Germany was created to push for abandoning nuclear energy. Essentially, they were in favor of burning more coal to get rid of nuclear energy earlier. And now they are the strongest proponent of saving the climate and oppose coal power the strongest. It is so ironic. If it weren't for them, we would be so much closer to climate neutrality. Their ridiculously stupid push against nuclear power costed us 20 years and several hundred billion €.
This is amazing. Kind of insane that we go through all of this effort from mining to nuclear power plants this recycling effort all to boil water to make the steam turbine go round.
@@carl8790 Well that isn't even remotely true. There are plenty of other options such as the Stirling cycle (heating a closed system containing some fancy pistons), Brayton cycle (heating a compressed gas), or even the Seeback effect (super low-efficiency black magic). The Rankine cycle was just the most mature option available when nuclear power plants were first developed.
@@pseudotasuki I know that smart-ass. That's why I said it's currently most effective way to convert the heat energy from the fuel rods into electricity. Especially from a cost and scalability stand point.
With our CANDU reactors here in Canada, we could burn both the Uranium and Plutonium from this recycling facility. We can burn Thorium too and yes it has been done in CANDU's before. France is certainly a world leader in Nuclear energy though and I bough to the French waste management system outlined here. It is truly a wonder of the world and we need more of this to make Nuclear even more sustainable then it is now. Yucca mountain needs a facility like this to deal with all that valuable spent fuel that is being wastefully discarded. It is like throwing away many many tankers of oil. Such a waste of such a valuable material
They take the dingle bop and they push it through the grumbo, where the fleeb is rubbed against it. It's important that the fleeb is rubbed, becasue the fleeb has all the fleeb juice.
This, right here, is why France is deserving of the title "most responsible nation in the world", and I say that sincerely as a British person. The rest of the world is so moronic for not following their example.
It sounds good. However, reprocessed wastes still need disposal on substantial timeframes. Since fission waste generate most of the decay heat, any permanent disposal has to be just as large and spaced out. The actinides still need disposal. Recycling used MOX fuel is it's own problem. Neutron bombardment of uranium gets you plutonium, but neutron bombardment of plutonium gets you a hot mess of other actinides and isotopes. Half of these are neutron absorbers, but not productively reactive. Others are gamma emitters like the fission products, but somewhat longer lived (70 years for U232). Either way, MOX waste needs more elaborate handling, more spaced out disposal sites and longer disposal timeframes. As a result, processing or recycling of MOX fuel is much more expensive, and a lot more elaborate, to get a smaller amount of less useful fuel than less effort gets from ordinary spent uranium fuel. France has processed about a third of all it's spent fuel and is falling further behind. Their stockpile of separated plutonium is a growing security and proliferation hazard. Not such good global citizens as you might think
Great! now get the costs down. Currently the main reason the US doesn't reprocess it's spent cores is the cost. Using new cores from Uranium ore is cheaper.
Yes France has been ahead and doing this for a while now....the rest of the World needs to learn from this. Meanwhile Thorium is set to stake it's claim. Exciting times!
What % of lifetime electricity produced is spent building a plant? What % of electricity produced from 1g of fuel is spent on producing the 1g of fuel. What % of electricity produced is spent recycling the waste material? Not tyring to make a point, just curious..
I think the important thing to note here is that many spent fuel facilities around the world will be going through the normal process of sending their waste to storage (money being spent). This facility is integrating a recycling service, in addition to the preparing of waste material for storage. It said in one point in the video that about a quarter of the energy can still be used from this fuel, which is a considerable amount in comparison to fossil fuels. If more facilities like this were built around the world then the efficiency would increase massively, without the extra cost and CO2 production of sending fuel to Normandy from all around the world.
@@soulfox3381 and @Marko R - I don't have a %, but the carbon cost of building the 60 year plant, mining concrete, iron, uranium, processing U fuel, reprocessing fuel, waste storage and plant teardown is 12 gCO2eq/kWh. Versus for wind which the carbon cost of building the 30 year turbine, mining concrete, iron, and plant teardown is 11 gCO2eq/kWh. Thus, estimating based on the much smaller footprint of a single wind turbine (ok, because gCO2/kWh is a ratio), the cost % of lifetime electricity produced must be quite low - under 0.01%, 0.001%?
Ahh yes, now you're picking at some nasty hidden scabs. The first issue is: they vent these gases. There are a myriad of concerns that come with this. But perhaps the *most ironic* part of this process is the fact that CO₂ is the main byproducts of a plutonium oxalate calcination process. It is indeed hilarious that the industry that vilifies CO₂ actually produces it through its dirty reprocessing operations. Of course, in reality, CO₂is the least of the worrisome byproducts. The radioactive liquid residues are released into the sea. The radioactive gases are vented. The sludges are stored onsite.
Primarily, your video helped to me for my project more. Merely there is one question stick to my brain that is you mentioned during recycling extract uranyl-nitrate by evaporating and question is what uranium isotope consist this substance inside. U238 or U235?
both isotopes will be present (although U-238 will dominate because most of the U-235 has been fissioned) throughout the _chemical_ processing. To separate the isotopes you need _mechanical_ processing (based on mass - UF6 diffusion or centrifuges).
@@factnotfiction5915 thank you so much, really i needed to this information. i never want to do tire you but, can you send me information resources that covering upon this please, any thesis journal or any one. And if i am not mistaken you mentioned U-238 will dominate, can i seperate safely U-238 from fuel to use anything in theory, also let`s think i could seperated safely and i would use this for in some project, is this harmfull for healthy?
İ am student, i have been working for physics competition, topic upon nuclear energy. And also do you know radiation amount (meV or SAR) of nuclear waste(stopped fission) both of U-238 or U-235?
@@eminrahimov4411 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotope#Chemical_and_molecular_properties "Because the chemical behavior of an atom is largely determined by its electronic structure, different isotopes exhibit nearly identical chemical behavior." U-238 is a low-level alpha emitter, so radiologically it isn't very dangerous (gloves are more than enough to stop alpha particles for handling). Chemically (i.e. any isotope), uranium is a heavy metal that would disrupt a biological system - similar to lead, mercury, cadmium poisoning - you wouldn't want to introduce it into your body (via a cut, breathing, eating it, etc).
@@eminrahimov4411 the radiation of spent nuclear fuel depends upon how long it has been in a reactor and at what power level. The U-238 and U-235 radiation is quite low; the fission product radiation is quite high. Here is a good starting point - www.nrc.gov/waste.html
1kg of U235 enriched to 100 percent equals 2.8169 tonnes of fuel enough for 4 fuel rods, this can be done by blending using mixers . Depleted uranium still has some useful fuel and can be done as above ,so a Purex plant with capacity of 2000 tonnes will produce 6000 tonnes of chemical liquids mainly nitrates so these need careful storage and to be leak proof. In the US over 710000 tonnes of DUF6 some stored okay but others are leaking so clean up is needed.
@@keitht24 that doesn't answer my question at all. I asked what the consumption of energy is based on a set quantity. Read people's comments properly before replying.
@@engineeruk8667 i would be also very interested to see an answer to your question. The ratio of energy consumed to produce the MOX fuel / energy created from MOX fuel ... not sure the ratio is smaller than 1 .
oh, you mean how much electricity is needed for this recycling process? doesn't look like that much. it's not like a metal foundry where you consume loads of energy for mass production of steel. how much more energy does Carbon Capture take anyway? did you know that coal power plants produce waste, too? much nastier than 90% of nuclear waste IIRC.
I NEVER knew this existed until today! Honestly though when watching it, I sarcastically thought, "What could go wrong?" We might be better off staying with Yucca Mountain. :-(
Not really. Some of it has been converted from Iron to other elements. Some, like Cobalt-60 make it dangerously radioactive, others contaminate the metal and weaken it for any useful purpose.
So, when they bury the waste and after tens of thousands of years the casing degrades, will it matter because it’s so far under ground or will it deep through the rock and soil to eventually reach the surface?
After around 10 thousand years, the radiotoxicity of the waste is extremely low, even lower then the toxicity of the original ore. And the waste is buried in rocks that don't really allow water through them like granite.
Not really. We make medical and engineering isotopes with optimised processes, bombarding pure substances with carefully moderated neutrons to get the right energy window and optimised outputs. This minimises the difficulty of purifying and using the desired isotope. Spent fuel is a mess, and separating anything desirable is a much more difficult task.
The US learned the hard way (decades ago) that commercial reprocessing of fuels is not environmentally feasible, is not cost effective, is energy intensive, and creates a complex waste stream that is 10x more of a problem than initial fuel enrichment and fabrication itself. Orano La Hague simply flushes its effluents out into the North Sea, stores high-level sludges onsite, and periodically vents its gases into the air. For better or for worse, companies can't get away with this in the US anymore.
When in solid fuel assemblies generated fission products reach 4% the reactivity slows down due to mainly bound xenon gas, which in a liquid fuel reactor would be easily separated. All of the Uranium and Plutonium and others can generate energy, but neutron impeding fission products needs to be separated out. This was invented in the 1950s by Alvin Weinberg at ORNL, and a test reactor was build and ran until early 70's. many new Gen4 projects use liquid fuel for conserving the fuel or just using "waste" as the fuel.
@@morgangeeeee Is not somewhere, is called waste disposal facilities, and by the way this is the safest waste on earth without impact on the environment as this disposal facilities has no bridge with the environment compare to any other conventional waste you can think of. Of cause, with Gen IV reactors on it way, we won't have FP because all will be used up in these reactors
@@emekaolebunne7336 I agree with you in some aspects, but it is not sustainable and we need to move away from sealing high level waste up and storing in these facilities. Gen IV is a great step forward and there is much more to come from nuclear!
They mostly can. There's some very valuable stuff in there, including platinum group metals and xenon gas, most of which is completely nonradioactive after a few years cooldown.
@@morgangeeeee As Jakob Brinka Berg states, the fission products just need 300 years of waiting. At that point then, yes, they are recyclable. You (well, your great-great-grandchildren) just go back to the repository and dig up the containers. As a plus, unlike regular prospecting for mines, you know exactly what you will get inside (the decay process is deterministic - as an example, we can see Ba-140, a large % of fission products, decay chain here periodictable.com/Isotopes/056.140/index.full.html, resulting in stable Ce-140, so we know a large % after 300 year will be Ce-140) and where to find the minerals.
Is this method needed if to use the newer MSR’s? Where does the wastewater from this process go? How much is the cost from this treatment? Is this environmental safe?
To recycle the spent fuel rods, why don't they use them to heat cities with hot water? They could be in a central location and used to heat water , then pump it to heat all of downtowns buildings for a long time. Save money for the city.
It warms water but not even warm enough to take a shower and would be cooled already before it reaches the houses. That, and the infrastructure cost isn't worth it let alone the moral issue of people not wanting to be anywhere near it.
Also, it is strategically questionable to have high concentrated radiation in the centre of cities. If somebody blows it up its probably not for the better...
@@TheBrokkoli611 you may be surprised to know that there are nuclear research reactors within major cities, such as MIT's reactor in Cambridge, MA. Those reactors are not pressurized systems, however. There have been discussions for district heating only reactors in China, look up the DHR-400. Canada considered something similar with their SLOWPOKE design back in the 1980s
Because it had been irradiated by neutrons, so it turned out to be radioactive itself. It constitutes the so-called "intermediate level radioactive waste". Due to naturally occurring decaying process, its radioactive gets low enough in few tens of years, then it can be recycled together with regular metal scrap without problems.
@@scarpfish Umm, no. The fission products are things like iodine, caesium, barium, xenon etc. Things from the middle of the periodic rable. Transuranics are formed from the bombardment of uranium to form even heavier isotopes and elements. And then they are formed from the bombardment of these in turn. Plutonium products include awkward gamma emitters and neutron poisons.
Because if you look at the facts nuclear energy is extremely expensive and only increasing, while solar is decreasing. According to the WNSIR report and Reuters: Nuclear is also much more expensive... Solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per MWh, wind power is $29-$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112 and $189.
Yes, nuclear waste reprocessing is ruinously expensive and inefficient. Recycling causes an additional problem: Used MOX fuel, which is more expensive and difficult.
This almost sounds good. However, if you recycle spent uranium fuel into MOX fuel, sooner or later you have a lot of used MOX fuel. Used MOX fuel presents additional challenges. Accumulated plutonium bombardment products present a greater hazard than bombarded uranium. In particular U232 accumulates, as well as a greater variety and concentration of actinides with large neutron cross-sections and low reactivity. U232 co-separates with the actinides, but it's immediate decay products emit hard gamma rather than alpha or neutrons, and has a half-life of seventy years. All subsequent handling is complicated by this, whether you choose direct disposal, processing and disposal, or recycling. Spent fuel represents a disposal problem. Spent MOX fuel is a bigger one.
@@janjan55555 Nope. Not even Russia. Sure they have a reactor that can "burn" plutonium, But...... The Russian BN-800 was intended to "burn" excess *weapons* plutonium. This weapons grade plutonium is exceptionally high chemical and isotopic purity, at stupendous cost. So it has excellent reactivity in a Fast Neutron Reactor (or in a bomb, as intended). Making this plutonium involved specialised breeder reactors optimised to produce desirable fissile plutonium from uranium and minimise low reactivity and "poison" products. Then it underwent exceptional chemical and isotopic separations. It's nice stuff, gold-star "high octane" if you would indulge me. Very expensive, but with every step optimised to minimise costs to get that result. Used MOX fuel is whole other can of worms. MOX is typically used as a fraction of the fuel mix in an otherwise normal-ish Thermal Neutron Reactor. The products (not counting ordinary fission products) are a nightmare mixture of Uranium bombardment products and plutonium bombardment products. Much of this mixture is low reactivity, and a substantial proportion is "poisons" which capture neutrons and do not fission. The proportion of these is higher than from a plutonium breeder because the reactor was for power generation, so it was a Thermal neutron reactor and they used a "high burn-up" strategy. In short, the BN-800 cannot use it without first separating and processing this nightmare mixture. Either it gets processed to remove all the low-reactivity material, which leaves you with that waste to deal with, or it reduces the efficiency of the reactor intended to "burn" it. We already know that the BN-800 required substantial extra fuel development that delayed full operations for some years, and this was using the almost fantastically ideal materials produced by weapons programmes. Using the nightmare mix of transuranics produced by fifty different reactors all using different fuel mixtures and different burn-up rates is not happening with that reactor. And this brings us back to my original comment: Used MOX differs from ordinary Uranium Spent Fuel. The plutonium bombardment products are far more diverse, more so with high burn-up, and accumulate an increasing proportion of U232. This makes even standard reprocessing harder, let alone reprocessing for fuel.
@@aaroncosier735 So Aaron "In short, the BN-800 cannot use it without first separating and processing this nightmare mixture." ==> What you're saying is (forgive my ignorance) is that currently nobody can do it cost efficiently right? Not a single nation? And I mean separating and processing this mixture?
@@janjan55555 Yup, that's it, in a nutshell. They *could* conceivably do it, but it would be far more elaborate than the processing of used uranium only fuels, or the original purifications used to make the weapons. For spent uranium-only fuels, you only need to separate the fission products. The Actinide products are still mostly the more desirable plutonium isotopes like Pu239, plus unreacted uranium 235 and U238. You can use that to make MOX without too much stuffing around, so long as the burn-up was not too high. Used MOX has what I described earlier as a nightmare mixture. For it to be *good* fuel would require not just the chemical separation of Uranium and Plutonium and the other minor actinides, but also the separation of the awkward and less reactive even-numbered isotopes of Plutonium from the odd-numbered, as well as U236 and U232. These even-numbered plutonium isotopes and U236 absorb neutrons but do not react productively, reducing the reactivity of any subsequent fuel they are in. Separating isotopes requires the same processes as enrichment, which are both inordinately expensive and proliferation hazards. This is all made more interesting by U232. This isotope has immediate daughters that are gamma emitters. The sort of protective shields that are adequate for making MOX from separated spent UOX (mainly alpha and neutron emitters) will not stop high-energy gamma. So, instead of using glove boxes, it would need remote handling. The isotopic separation has to catch several odd numbered isotopes, while discarding several even-numbered ones. It's a mess. The BN-800 is designed to react weapons grade plutonium, mixed with depleted or natural uranium. This is about as sweet a mixture as you could wish for, made from already highly purified stockpiles, and they still had fuel formulation issues. Using Spent MOX fuel in this reactor will require some heroic purifications compared to the deliberately bred materials that were used to make the weapons in the first place. Key and unchangeable parts of the reactor geometry, the overall size, the fuel spacing, the vessel materials, the types of control rods, dampers and reflectors are all finely tuned to the intended fuel. "not a single nation" Well, after thirty years of trying France has reportedly managed to put a single batch of reprocessed MOX through their most advanced phoenix for a second time. That's the only one I know of, and it sure as shit wasn't cost-effective. The problem is not trivial. It is claimed that future Gen IV Fast Neutron Reactors will "close the fuel cycle", but then again, that is the claim of the BN-800, and it manifestly cannot. These proposed "burners" have not been built, nor tested for their effectiveness in actually burning wastes. In practice, they will only do so at the expense of the neutron economy and reduced efficiency: Hence using more fuel to "burn" wastes rather than just making energy directly. Like wasting good fuel to "burn" a wet woolen blanket. It is by no means certain such a reactor can be built to last 20 or more years and then operate efficiently. Molten Salt Reactors face additional issues: The salt is very corrosive and the materials to build them simply do not exist yet. Even if they did, ongoing "burning" of fission products necessarily makes a full range range of all other elements, capable of all and every sort of corrosion, oxidation and recombination in the mixture. These problems may take decades to solve. Malcolm Joyce wrote a very accessible introductory text on nuclear engineering where he discusses the MOX reprocessing issues, about chapter 13, from memory.
@@janjan55555 A further note: You may find reports that France has been recycling MOX since 2004. A closer read will reveal that they did about ten tonnes. Since then they have managed to recycle about 70 tonnes of MOX, out of several *thousand* tonnes still waiting in cooling pools. They also like to mention "REMIX", but this fuel mixture contains about 1% of used MOX, and about 4% uranium derived from previously higher enriched uranium. The capacity of recycling is bugger all, and the fuel mixtures have to contain extra U235 to overcome the MOX derived plutonium mixture. Anybody who has watched a sullen teenager wash a single dish and expect a medal will be familiar with the spectacle.
Interesting video! I wonder though, the shredding of the hulls looks a bit wasteful. Would it be possible to make the fuel elements removeable so the same rod can be used over and over again? It would be activated, but that can be overcome with the same containers it arrived in. And regarding the waste products, many are short lived. Is there a separation so the really short lived isotopes can decay into a stable form and not contribute to the waste that needs to be stored?
The Zirconium cladding gets degraded by the intense neutron radiation. Some is transformed into radioactive isotopes. It has to be sacrificed as waste. The most short-lived fission products decay in the cooling pools. this takes from two to five years. What's left has lots of caesium-137, which has a half life of 30 years. After separation this requires disposal timeframes of about 1000 years. The longer lived actinides are a bigger problem. Some can be used in recycled fuel, but others really need disposal. Used recycled fuel has even more of these and is not as easy a problem.
If they are gaseous, they vent them. If they are liquid, they periodically release them into the ocean. If they are solid or semisolid, they store them onsite as sludge or as vitrified glass.
@@anxiousearth680 Directly from Areva/Orano/Cogema documents: Liquid effluent from La Hague is released into the sea via a pipe extending from Anse des Moulinets, 60 m from the coast to an outfall 5,000 m off the coast of Nez de Jobourg. This effluent largely consists of tritium, but also contains large amounts of Iodine 129. High concentrations of TC99, uranium and plutonium are also present in the effluent. From academic papers, e.g.: Atmospheric tritium concentrations under influence of AREVA NC La Hague reprocessing plant (France) and background levels (Connan O., et. al) : "During shearing and dissolution activities, tritium is mainly released into the sea in liquid form, but is also released in gaseous form into the atmosphere." From studies by ACRO (Association pour le Contrôle de la Radioactivité dans L'Ouest): "Despite France’s international commitments, radioactive discharges at sea are not decreasing. With its reprocessing plant at La Hague, France has the highest radioactive discharges into the sea in Europe. And these discharges are not decreasing, despite the commitments made in 1998 in Sintra, Portugal, by the member states of the OSPAR Convention for the Protection of the North-East Atlantic: “WE AGREE […] to prevent pollution of the maritime area from ionising radiation through progressive and substantial reductions of discharges, emissions and losses of radioactive substances, with the ultimate aim of concentrations in the environment near background values for naturally occurring radioactive substances and close to zero for artificial radioactive substances. […] WE SHALL ENSURE that discharges, emissions and losses of radioactive substances are reduced by the year 2020 to levels where the additional concentrations in the marine environment above historic levels, resulting from such discharges, emissions and losses, are close to zero.” These commitments were confirmed at subsequent meetings in 2003 in Bremen and 2010 in Bergen. However, the results of ACRO’s 25 years of citizen monitoring of radioactivity in the environment show that this is not the case: discharges from the Orano reprocessing plant in La Hague can be seen all along the Channel coastline and, in the summer of 2021, could still be detected as far as the Danish border. The association therefore urges France to respect its international commitments by significantly reducing its radioactive discharges at sea. It will, for its part, maintain its vigilance."
This is a long, power consuming and expensive process. That is why it is cheaper to throw away the nuclear waste than undergoing re cycling. Eonomics is really a b****
Nuclear is the one and only energy industry which takes responsibility and recycles its own waste. As of now nuclear technology is the best reliable clean energy. Hoping for fusion power reactors near soon..
What percentage of nuclear waste has been recycled? 1%, maybe 2% at most. How much has been recycled *twice*? a few tonnes, at enormous expense. Fusion is still distant. Materials that will withstand the neutron flux for the operational years required are still imaginary.
Costs aside, any nuclear material payload isn't going up in a rocket anytime soon considering even the most modern rockets have a 1% failure rate, i.e. kaboom (and widespread radioactive contamination). 💥☢ 🚀
Go and have a look in Sellafield UK. They have a lot of experience with recycling nuclear fuel. The also had a few accidents and the have plenty of cancer in the surrounding area. 😁
Keep in mind that the waste needs to be stored for 10s of millions of years, not tens of thousands as indicated in this video. Plutonium has a half life of a quarter of a million years.
That's very foolish. Every energy source, especially solar, wind, hydro, geo all have their advtanges and disadvantages. It's good to take advantage of everything we have. Don't have so much hubris
It has been massively irradiated and contains fast-neutron bombardment and fission products. But yes. The whole thing is a waste, including the uranium. In a few centuries or millennia we may need this stuff, and have sufficiently developed technology to use it well rather than wastefully.
Nuclear is NOT cheap at all and even nuclear LOBBYISTS agree. According to the WNSIR report and Reuters: Nuclear is also much more expensive... Solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per MWh, wind power is $29-$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112 and $189.
Only its capital cost is expensive Once it got its return investment, its cheaper than most electricity generator. And its reliable, can operate 24/7 all year, unlike solar who will basically useless on night and operate in reduced capacity during winter, same goes for wind.
Russia has a nuclear power plant that uses recycled nuclear spent fuel rods. The process used is superior to what is shown in this video. Several countries have attempted to build this type of nuclear reactor and gave up the projects. There are many links to the Russian process on the Internet. Their reactor started operating in 2016 with final success in 2019.
Nope, BN-800 uses MOX formulated from excess weapons plutonium mixed with depleted uranium. These are perhaps the purest and most tractable materials on the planet for making MOX, and they still had a three year delay making it work. Using spent fuel will involve far less isotopic purity and lower reactivity. The longer the burnup of the spent fuel, the worse it gets. Using spent MOX as a feedstock is not even in the picture for the foreseeable future. The French managed to use about ten tonnes as a test batch, but have several thousand tonnes waiting. Could take a few centuries.
I am a scientist and I have a qualification which involves nuclear safety. I would not like to be a person in 100 years' time who has the responsible for using stored waste to create energy. These things are always OK when they are somebody else's problem. One of the things which should be prohibited is using depleted uranium to make artillery projectiles.
Is not really a failed experiment, is just super expensive, that's because any nuclear reprocessing plant that uses the Thorex, Purex, or Urex process basically has hundreeds of not thousands of chemicals steps, to process the elements, separate the fission products, and treat and dispose of all the contaminated solvants, bases, acids, liquids and other streams, that's because it wasn't made for power generation but for making plutonium for warheads in the 1940s at any cost, either economical or enviromental A much better processing is the electrorefining of molten salts or pyroprocessing that Argonne developed, is actually the same process used to refine copper and rare earth materials but adapted to the nuclear industry.
Correct. It is *highly* energy intensive (nobody talks about how much energy is used throughout the reprocessing of fuel). *Extremely* expensive. *Very* dirty - more high level waste, chemical waste, and radioactive effluent is created through this process than through the initial creation and use of of the fuel itself. This defeats the purpose of nuclear energy from every angle: cost, efficiency, and environmental friendliness. Another irony is: the main byproduct of the calcination of plutonium oxalate is CO₂ . The very thing the nuclear industry vilifies.
Uranium... is concentrated by evaporation. Fission products... are concentrated by evaporation. Plutonium... is concentrated by evaporation. Wait, what is that blue glow? My mouth tastes like metal.
The fact that they have to constantly exclaim how safe the process is, tells me it's not safe. I'm sure there's plenty of human error that's eventually gonna lead to a disaster.
@@hamanakohamaneko7028 Chernobyl. Fukushima. 3 mile island. Various other meltdowns and disasters in soviet union and usa that they've covered up or we don't mention much in media. Look up a list of nuclear accidents in america and there's WAY more than just 3 mile island
@@aorusakiinform yourself well about these events, chernobyl was the only one that killed a lot of people and its literally impossible to happen again, fukushima was hit by a tsunami of a record breaking height plus even then it wasnt really that bad and three mile island was contained very well.
This is why electricity in France is much cheaper than in Germany. Nuclear energy is paradoxically is most environmental frienly and cheapest electricity source.
Germany shutting down nuclear is one of the dumbest decisions I've ever seen
Until it blows up., you're just trading savings now for life risk later.
@@cleverorb5914
That is where transmutation would come in.
You can basically accelerate the natural radioactive decay.
That would decrease the radioactivity of the material and reduce its half-life to only some hundred years.
@@Joel-ee4yh
It makes me fu****g mad.
The green party we have in Germany was created to push for abandoning nuclear energy.
Essentially, they were in favor of burning more coal to get rid of nuclear energy earlier.
And now they are the strongest proponent of saving the climate and oppose coal power the strongest.
It is so ironic.
If it weren't for them, we would be so much closer to climate neutrality.
Their ridiculously stupid push against nuclear power costed us 20 years and several hundred billion €.
@@Betterhose How is that possible? Has this been demonstrated outside the lab?
this is fantastic.... congrats france!
This is amazing. Kind of insane that we go through all of this effort from mining to nuclear power plants this recycling effort all to boil water to make the steam turbine go round.
It's complex, but sensible. What's insane is throwing out the fuel because we don't want to go through the trouble of removing 4% of it.
Well it's currently the only effective way we know how to convert heat energy to electricity.
@@carl8790 Well that isn't even remotely true. There are plenty of other options such as the Stirling cycle (heating a closed system containing some fancy pistons), Brayton cycle (heating a compressed gas), or even the Seeback effect (super low-efficiency black magic). The Rankine cycle was just the most mature option available when nuclear power plants were first developed.
@@pseudotasuki I know that smart-ass. That's why I said it's currently most effective way to convert the heat energy from the fuel rods into electricity. Especially from a cost and scalability stand point.
@@Robertx19 To boil water without emitting CO2.
With our CANDU reactors here in Canada, we could burn both the Uranium and Plutonium from this recycling facility. We can burn Thorium too and yes it has been done in CANDU's before.
France is certainly a world leader in Nuclear energy though and I bough to the French waste management system outlined here. It is truly a wonder of the world and we need more of this to make Nuclear even more sustainable then it is now. Yucca mountain needs a facility like this to deal with all that valuable spent fuel that is being wastefully discarded. It is like throwing away many many tankers of oil. Such a waste of such a valuable material
Nuclear reactors dont burn anything. There is no combustion, smoke or flame.
I really like the Dupic fuel option for CANDUs for further utilization.
They take the dingle bop and they push it through the grumbo, where the fleeb is rubbed against it. It's important that the fleeb is rubbed, becasue the fleeb has all the fleeb juice.
Corn pop approves of this message.
what is this a reference to?
@@regulate.artificer_g23.mdctlsk plumbus
Hahahaha you made my day
Incredible graphic! Extremely valuable and helpful to understanding the entire recycling process
This, right here, is why France is deserving of the title "most responsible nation in the world", and I say that sincerely as a British person. The rest of the world is so moronic for not following their example.
France is also one of the last nations to conduct live nuclear testing explosions.
It sounds good. However, reprocessed wastes still need disposal on substantial timeframes. Since fission waste generate most of the decay heat, any permanent disposal has to be just as large and spaced out.
The actinides still need disposal.
Recycling used MOX fuel is it's own problem. Neutron bombardment of uranium gets you plutonium, but neutron bombardment of plutonium gets you a hot mess of other actinides and isotopes. Half of these are neutron absorbers, but not productively reactive. Others are gamma emitters like the fission products, but somewhat longer lived (70 years for U232). Either way, MOX waste needs more elaborate handling, more spaced out disposal sites and longer disposal timeframes. As a result, processing or recycling of MOX fuel is much more expensive, and a lot more elaborate, to get a smaller amount of less useful fuel than less effort gets from ordinary spent uranium fuel.
France has processed about a third of all it's spent fuel and is falling further behind. Their stockpile of separated plutonium is a growing security and proliferation hazard.
Not such good global citizens as you might think
Great! now get the costs down. Currently the main reason the US doesn't reprocess it's spent cores is the cost. Using new cores from Uranium ore is cheaper.
Yes France has been ahead and doing this for a while now....the rest of the World needs to learn from this. Meanwhile Thorium is set to stake it's claim. Exciting times!
Love the presentation.
nuclear is the best form of energy!!
Not even close.
Not 100% because the maintenance, the facility, the processing, etc. Are very expensive not recommended for place that have poor economy
This is a great animation from a complicated and, I assume, expensive process.
What % of lifetime electricity produced is spent building a plant? What % of electricity produced from 1g of fuel is spent on producing the 1g of fuel. What % of electricity produced is spent recycling the waste material? Not tyring to make a point, just curious..
@Marko R Me too. Did you found something about it
I think the important thing to note here is that many spent fuel facilities around the world will be going through the normal process of sending their waste to storage (money being spent). This facility is integrating a recycling service, in addition to the preparing of waste material for storage.
It said in one point in the video that about a quarter of the energy can still be used from this fuel, which is a considerable amount in comparison to fossil fuels. If more facilities like this were built around the world then the efficiency would increase massively, without the extra cost and CO2 production of sending fuel to Normandy from all around the world.
@@soulfox3381 and @Marko R - I don't have a %, but the carbon cost of building the 60 year plant, mining concrete, iron, uranium, processing U fuel, reprocessing fuel, waste storage and plant teardown is 12 gCO2eq/kWh.
Versus for wind which the carbon cost of building the 30 year turbine, mining concrete, iron, and plant teardown is 11 gCO2eq/kWh.
Thus, estimating based on the much smaller footprint of a single wind turbine (ok, because gCO2/kWh is a ratio), the cost % of lifetime electricity produced must be quite low - under 0.01%, 0.001%?
@@factnotfiction5915 and then comes energy storage and the wind get skyrocketed way above nuclear carbon footprint
I respectfully say: this sound like the kidney of a giant, working to produce urine.
Hahaha
Humanityt really has gone full circle with this
What happens to the gasses produced when plutonium oxalate goes through the calcinator?
Ahh yes, now you're picking at some nasty hidden scabs. The first issue is: they vent these gases. There are a myriad of concerns that come with this. But perhaps the *most ironic* part of this process is the fact that CO₂ is the main byproducts of a plutonium oxalate calcination process. It is indeed hilarious that the industry that vilifies CO₂ actually produces it through its dirty reprocessing operations. Of course, in reality, CO₂is the least of the worrisome byproducts. The radioactive liquid residues are released into the sea. The radioactive gases are vented. The sludges are stored onsite.
Thanks for the upload, very helpful
Primarily, your video helped to me for my project more. Merely there is one question stick to my brain that is you mentioned during recycling extract uranyl-nitrate by evaporating and question is what uranium isotope consist this substance inside. U238 or U235?
both isotopes will be present (although U-238 will dominate because most of the U-235 has been fissioned) throughout the _chemical_ processing.
To separate the isotopes you need _mechanical_ processing (based on mass - UF6 diffusion or centrifuges).
@@factnotfiction5915 thank you so much, really i needed to this information. i never want to do tire you but, can you send me information resources that covering upon this please, any thesis journal or any one. And if i am not mistaken you mentioned U-238 will dominate, can i seperate safely U-238 from fuel to use anything in theory, also let`s think i could seperated safely and i would use this for in some project, is this harmfull for healthy?
İ am student, i have been working for physics competition, topic upon nuclear energy. And also do you know radiation amount (meV or SAR) of nuclear waste(stopped fission) both of U-238 or U-235?
@@eminrahimov4411 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotope#Chemical_and_molecular_properties
"Because the chemical behavior of an atom is largely determined by its electronic structure, different isotopes exhibit nearly identical chemical behavior."
U-238 is a low-level alpha emitter, so radiologically it isn't very dangerous (gloves are more than enough to stop alpha particles for handling).
Chemically (i.e. any isotope), uranium is a heavy metal that would disrupt a biological system - similar to lead, mercury, cadmium poisoning - you wouldn't want to introduce it into your body (via a cut, breathing, eating it, etc).
@@eminrahimov4411 the radiation of spent nuclear fuel depends upon how long it has been in a reactor and at what power level.
The U-238 and U-235 radiation is quite low; the fission product radiation is quite high.
Here is a good starting point - www.nrc.gov/waste.html
1kg of U235 enriched to 100 percent equals 2.8169 tonnes of fuel enough for 4 fuel rods, this can be done by blending using mixers . Depleted uranium still has some useful fuel and can be done as above ,so a Purex plant with capacity of 2000 tonnes will produce 6000 tonnes of chemical liquids mainly nitrates so these need careful storage and to be leak proof. In the US over 710000 tonnes of DUF6 some stored okay but others are leaking so clean up is needed.
So what is the value of energy consumed when recycling an amount? Would be interesting to see the numbers.
Well they just showed you his much energy it generates compared to coal.
@@keitht24 that doesn't answer my question at all. I asked what the consumption of energy is based on a set quantity. Read people's comments properly before replying.
@@engineeruk8667 i would be also very interested to see an answer to your question. The ratio of energy consumed to produce the MOX fuel / energy created from MOX fuel ... not sure the ratio is smaller than 1 .
@@engineeruk8667 it's piss poor
oh, you mean how much electricity is needed for this recycling process? doesn't look like that much. it's not like a metal foundry where you consume loads of energy for mass production of steel.
how much more energy does Carbon Capture take anyway? did you know that coal power plants produce waste, too? much nastier than 90% of nuclear waste IIRC.
I NEVER knew this existed until today! Honestly though when watching it, I sarcastically thought, "What could go wrong?" We might be better off staying with Yucca Mountain. :-(
Yucca mountain cannot what we currently use. It is a failed project with no development for over a decade.
@@hammerheadcorvette4 virgin yucca mountain vs chad onkalo
can the old radioactive waste metal be used for 1st level containers?
Not really. Some of it has been converted from Iron to other elements. Some, like Cobalt-60 make it dangerously radioactive, others contaminate the metal and weaken it for any useful purpose.
So, when they bury the waste and after tens of thousands of years the casing degrades, will it matter because it’s so far under ground or will it deep through the rock and soil to eventually reach the surface?
After around 10 thousand years, the radiotoxicity of the waste is extremely low, even lower then the toxicity of the original ore. And the waste is buried in rocks that don't really allow water through them like granite.
I Love these graphics. Remind me of a Royksopp music video.
Very good video
And some of the fission products are usable in industrial and medical applications
Not really. We make medical and engineering isotopes with optimised processes, bombarding pure substances with carefully moderated neutrons to get the right energy window and optimised outputs. This minimises the difficulty of purifying and using the desired isotope.
Spent fuel is a mess, and separating anything desirable is a much more difficult task.
If only the US would take note...
It is illegal in the US
@@hamanakohamaneko7028 Unfortunately, yes.
The US learned the hard way (decades ago) that commercial reprocessing of fuels is not environmentally feasible, is not cost effective, is energy intensive, and creates a complex waste stream that is 10x more of a problem than initial fuel enrichment and fabrication itself. Orano La Hague simply flushes its effluents out into the North Sea, stores high-level sludges onsite, and periodically vents its gases into the air. For better or for worse, companies can't get away with this in the US anymore.
very cool. but i kinda wish they'd find a use for the last 5%.
When in solid fuel assemblies generated fission products reach 4% the reactivity slows down due to mainly bound xenon gas, which in a liquid fuel reactor would be easily separated. All of the Uranium and Plutonium and others can generate energy, but neutron impeding fission products needs to be separated out. This was invented in the 1950s by Alvin Weinberg at ORNL, and a test reactor was build and ran until early 70's. many new Gen4 projects use liquid fuel for conserving the fuel or just using "waste" as the fuel.
Imagine if the Fission Products could be recicled too
This is something I think about regularly! It seems ridiculous to encase it in these containers and just leave them somewhere, there must be a way!
@@morgangeeeee Is not somewhere, is called waste disposal facilities, and by the way this is the safest waste on earth without impact on the environment as this disposal facilities has no bridge with the environment compare to any other conventional waste you can think of.
Of cause, with Gen IV reactors on it way, we won't have FP because all will be used up in these reactors
@@emekaolebunne7336 I agree with you in some aspects, but it is not sustainable and we need to move away from sealing high level waste up and storing in these facilities. Gen IV is a great step forward and there is much more to come from nuclear!
They mostly can. There's some very valuable stuff in there, including platinum group metals and xenon gas, most of which is completely nonradioactive after a few years cooldown.
@@morgangeeeee As Jakob Brinka Berg states, the fission products just need 300 years of waiting. At that point then, yes, they are recyclable.
You (well, your great-great-grandchildren) just go back to the repository and dig up the containers. As a plus, unlike regular prospecting for mines, you know exactly what you will get inside (the decay process is deterministic - as an example, we can see Ba-140, a large % of fission products, decay chain here periodictable.com/Isotopes/056.140/index.full.html, resulting in stable Ce-140, so we know a large % after 300 year will be Ce-140) and where to find the minerals.
Is this method needed if to use the newer MSR’s?
Where does the wastewater from this process go?
How much is the cost from this treatment?
Is this environmental safe?
Amazing! Its really informative.
is there some sort of usage of the radioactive waste?
So, that vitrification thing, that essentially means they make a lot of radioactive glass, right?
Perfect process👍any analysis on the weather change when nature been de-radiated?
To recycle the spent fuel rods, why don't they use them to heat cities with hot water?
They could be in a central location and used to heat water , then pump it to heat all of downtowns buildings for a long time. Save money for the city.
99% Perspiration
Spent fuel does not emit enough heat to efficiently power something as large as a district heating plant.
Or you could directly use the waste heat of a nuclear power plant for heating homes like they do at Beznau in Switzerland.
It warms water but not even warm enough to take a shower and would be cooled already before it reaches the houses. That, and the infrastructure cost isn't worth it let alone the moral issue of people not wanting to be anywhere near it.
Also, it is strategically questionable to have high concentrated radiation in the centre of cities. If somebody blows it up its probably not for the better...
@@TheBrokkoli611 you may be surprised to know that there are nuclear research reactors within major cities, such as MIT's reactor in Cambridge, MA. Those reactors are not pressurized systems, however. There have been discussions for district heating only reactors in China, look up the DHR-400. Canada considered something similar with their SLOWPOKE design back in the 1980s
Why the zirconium used for the fuel rod cladding cannot be recycled?
Because it had been irradiated by neutrons, so it turned out to be radioactive itself. It constitutes the so-called "intermediate level radioactive waste". Due to naturally occurring decaying process, its radioactive gets low enough in few tens of years, then it can be recycled together with regular metal scrap without problems.
The control room is a great mix of hardwired old school reliable safety systems, very modern IT, and everything inbetween.
What about the transuranics?
Those would be the fission products.
@@scarpfish Umm, no.
The fission products are things like iodine, caesium, barium, xenon etc. Things from the middle of the periodic rable.
Transuranics are formed from the bombardment of uranium to form even heavier isotopes and elements. And then they are formed from the bombardment of these in turn. Plutonium products include awkward gamma emitters and neutron poisons.
How much of this process is powered by a nuclear power plant?
80% of the french energy come from nuclear power plant
Whats the music used in the video?
Do you recycle uranium 238?
How many of these dislikes to the video think that this is inefficient?
Because if you look at the facts nuclear energy is extremely expensive and only increasing, while solar is decreasing. According to the WNSIR report and Reuters: Nuclear is also much more expensive... Solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per MWh, wind power is $29-$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112 and $189.
@@aorusaki Which is why we need solely nuclear energy and no wind or solar ever again!
Yes, nuclear waste reprocessing is ruinously expensive and inefficient.
Recycling causes an additional problem: Used MOX fuel, which is more expensive and difficult.
we have molten salt reactors instead of nuclear energy planned for the future
This almost sounds good.
However, if you recycle spent uranium fuel into MOX fuel, sooner or later you have a lot of used MOX fuel.
Used MOX fuel presents additional challenges. Accumulated plutonium bombardment products present a greater hazard than bombarded uranium. In particular U232 accumulates, as well as a greater variety and concentration of actinides with large neutron cross-sections and low reactivity. U232 co-separates with the actinides, but it's immediate decay products emit hard gamma rather than alpha or neutrons, and has a half-life of seventy years. All subsequent handling is complicated by this, whether you choose direct disposal, processing and disposal, or recycling.
Spent fuel represents a disposal problem. Spent MOX fuel is a bigger one.
Not even Russia has an answer for spent MOX fuel?
@@janjan55555
Nope. Not even Russia.
Sure they have a reactor that can "burn" plutonium, But......
The Russian BN-800 was intended to "burn" excess *weapons* plutonium. This weapons grade plutonium is exceptionally high chemical and isotopic purity, at stupendous cost. So it has excellent reactivity in a Fast Neutron Reactor (or in a bomb, as intended). Making this plutonium involved specialised breeder reactors optimised to produce desirable fissile plutonium from uranium and minimise low reactivity and "poison" products. Then it underwent exceptional chemical and isotopic separations. It's nice stuff, gold-star "high octane" if you would indulge me. Very expensive, but with every step optimised to minimise costs to get that result.
Used MOX fuel is whole other can of worms. MOX is typically used as a fraction of the fuel mix in an otherwise normal-ish Thermal Neutron Reactor. The products (not counting ordinary fission products) are a nightmare mixture of Uranium bombardment products and plutonium bombardment products. Much of this mixture is low reactivity, and a substantial proportion is "poisons" which capture neutrons and do not fission. The proportion of these is higher than from a plutonium breeder because the reactor was for power generation, so it was a Thermal neutron reactor and they used a "high burn-up" strategy.
In short, the BN-800 cannot use it without first separating and processing this nightmare mixture. Either it gets processed to remove all the low-reactivity material, which leaves you with that waste to deal with, or it reduces the efficiency of the reactor intended to "burn" it. We already know that the BN-800 required substantial extra fuel development that delayed full operations for some years, and this was using the almost fantastically ideal materials produced by weapons programmes. Using the nightmare mix of transuranics produced by fifty different reactors all using different fuel mixtures and different burn-up rates is not happening with that reactor.
And this brings us back to my original comment: Used MOX differs from ordinary Uranium Spent Fuel. The plutonium bombardment products are far more diverse, more so with high burn-up, and accumulate an increasing proportion of U232. This makes even standard reprocessing harder, let alone reprocessing for fuel.
@@aaroncosier735 So Aaron "In short, the BN-800 cannot use it without first separating and processing this nightmare mixture."
==> What you're saying is (forgive my ignorance) is that currently nobody can do it cost efficiently right? Not a single nation? And I mean separating and processing this mixture?
@@janjan55555
Yup, that's it, in a nutshell.
They *could* conceivably do it, but it would be far more elaborate than the processing of used uranium only fuels, or the original purifications used to make the weapons.
For spent uranium-only fuels, you only need to separate the fission products. The Actinide products are still mostly the more desirable plutonium isotopes like Pu239, plus unreacted uranium 235 and U238. You can use that to make MOX without too much stuffing around, so long as the burn-up was not too high.
Used MOX has what I described earlier as a nightmare mixture. For it to be *good* fuel would require not just the chemical separation of Uranium and Plutonium and the other minor actinides, but also the separation of the awkward and less reactive even-numbered isotopes of Plutonium from the odd-numbered, as well as U236 and U232. These even-numbered plutonium isotopes and U236 absorb neutrons but do not react productively, reducing the reactivity of any subsequent fuel they are in. Separating isotopes requires the same processes as enrichment, which are both inordinately expensive and proliferation hazards. This is all made more interesting by U232. This isotope has immediate daughters that are gamma emitters. The sort of protective shields that are adequate for making MOX from separated spent UOX (mainly alpha and neutron emitters) will not stop high-energy gamma. So, instead of using glove boxes, it would need remote handling. The isotopic separation has to catch several odd numbered isotopes, while discarding several even-numbered ones. It's a mess.
The BN-800 is designed to react weapons grade plutonium, mixed with depleted or natural uranium. This is about as sweet a mixture as you could wish for, made from already highly purified stockpiles, and they still had fuel formulation issues. Using Spent MOX fuel in this reactor will require some heroic purifications compared to the deliberately bred materials that were used to make the weapons in the first place. Key and unchangeable parts of the reactor geometry, the overall size, the fuel spacing, the vessel materials, the types of control rods, dampers and reflectors are all finely tuned to the intended fuel.
"not a single nation"
Well, after thirty years of trying France has reportedly managed to put a single batch of reprocessed MOX through their most advanced phoenix for a second time. That's the only one I know of, and it sure as shit wasn't cost-effective.
The problem is not trivial.
It is claimed that future Gen IV Fast Neutron Reactors will "close the fuel cycle", but then again, that is the claim of the BN-800, and it manifestly cannot. These proposed "burners" have not been built, nor tested for their effectiveness in actually burning wastes. In practice, they will only do so at the expense of the neutron economy and reduced efficiency: Hence using more fuel to "burn" wastes rather than just making energy directly. Like wasting good fuel to "burn" a wet woolen blanket. It is by no means certain such a reactor can be built to last 20 or more years and then operate efficiently. Molten Salt Reactors face additional issues: The salt is very corrosive and the materials to build them simply do not exist yet. Even if they did, ongoing "burning" of fission products necessarily makes a full range range of all other elements, capable of all and every sort of corrosion, oxidation and recombination in the mixture. These problems may take decades to solve.
Malcolm Joyce wrote a very accessible introductory text on nuclear engineering where he discusses the MOX reprocessing issues, about chapter 13, from memory.
@@janjan55555
A further note: You may find reports that France has been recycling MOX since 2004. A closer read will reveal that they did about ten tonnes. Since then they have managed to recycle about 70 tonnes of MOX, out of several *thousand* tonnes still waiting in cooling pools. They also like to mention "REMIX", but this fuel mixture contains about 1% of used MOX, and about 4% uranium derived from previously higher enriched uranium. The capacity of recycling is bugger all, and the fuel mixtures have to contain extra U235 to overcome the MOX derived plutonium mixture.
Anybody who has watched a sullen teenager wash a single dish and expect a medal will be familiar with the spectacle.
Every kWh we consume from nuclear energy is a kWh less for a nuke.
The more uranium we use for nuclear, the more plutonium it makes for bombs, or trouble generally.
Interesting video! I wonder though, the shredding of the hulls looks a bit wasteful. Would it be possible to make the fuel elements removeable so the same rod can be used over and over again? It would be activated, but that can be overcome with the same containers it arrived in.
And regarding the waste products, many are short lived. Is there a separation so the really short lived isotopes can decay into a stable form and not contribute to the waste that needs to be stored?
Radiation degrades the hulls over time. Probably a safety thing.
The Zirconium cladding gets degraded by the intense neutron radiation. Some is transformed into radioactive isotopes. It has to be sacrificed as waste.
The most short-lived fission products decay in the cooling pools. this takes from two to five years. What's left has lots of caesium-137, which has a half life of 30 years. After separation this requires disposal timeframes of about 1000 years.
The longer lived actinides are a bigger problem. Some can be used in recycled fuel, but others really need disposal.
Used recycled fuel has even more of these and is not as easy a problem.
What happens to the other Actinides?
If they are gaseous, they vent them. If they are liquid, they periodically release them into the ocean. If they are solid or semisolid, they store them onsite as sludge or as vitrified glass.
too bad that la hague don't separate the FPs
correct, they release them into the sea.
@@crystallake6198 source?
@@anxiousearth680 Directly from Areva/Orano/Cogema documents: Liquid effluent from La Hague is released into the sea via a pipe extending from Anse des Moulinets, 60 m from the coast to an outfall 5,000 m off the coast of Nez de Jobourg. This effluent largely consists of tritium, but also contains large amounts of Iodine 129. High concentrations of TC99, uranium and plutonium are also present in the effluent.
From academic papers, e.g.: Atmospheric tritium concentrations under influence of AREVA NC La Hague reprocessing plant (France) and background levels (Connan O., et. al) : "During shearing and dissolution activities, tritium is mainly released into the sea in liquid form, but is also released in gaseous form into the atmosphere."
From studies by ACRO (Association pour le Contrôle de la Radioactivité dans L'Ouest): "Despite France’s international commitments, radioactive discharges at sea are not decreasing. With its reprocessing plant at La Hague, France has the highest radioactive discharges into the sea in Europe. And these discharges are not decreasing, despite the commitments made in 1998 in Sintra, Portugal, by the member states of the OSPAR Convention for the Protection of the North-East Atlantic:
“WE AGREE […] to prevent pollution of the maritime area from ionising radiation through progressive and substantial reductions of discharges, emissions and losses of radioactive substances, with the ultimate aim of concentrations in the environment near background values for naturally occurring radioactive substances and close to zero for artificial radioactive substances. […] WE SHALL ENSURE that discharges, emissions and losses of radioactive substances are reduced by the year 2020 to levels where the additional concentrations in the marine environment above historic levels, resulting from such discharges, emissions and losses, are close to zero.”
These commitments were confirmed at subsequent meetings in 2003 in Bremen and 2010 in Bergen.
However, the results of ACRO’s 25 years of citizen monitoring of radioactivity in the environment show that this is not the case: discharges from the Orano reprocessing plant in La Hague can be seen all along the Channel coastline and, in the summer of 2021, could still be detected as far as the Danish border. The association therefore urges France to respect its international commitments by significantly reducing its radioactive discharges at sea. It will, for its part, maintain its vigilance."
What about minor actinides?
Build FLIBE Reactors.
I prefer FNaZr reactors.
Out of what? the materials that can resist corrosion from molten fluoride solutions for 20 years operation just don't exist and may not for decades.
maybe you can make presentation of tchernobyl process ? hehehe
This is a long, power consuming and expensive process. That is why it is cheaper to throw away the nuclear waste than undergoing re cycling. Eonomics is really a b****
Nuclear is the one and only energy industry which takes responsibility and recycles its own waste. As of now nuclear technology is the best reliable clean energy. Hoping for fusion power reactors near soon..
What percentage of nuclear waste has been recycled? 1%, maybe 2% at most.
How much has been recycled *twice*? a few tonnes, at enormous expense.
Fusion is still distant. Materials that will withstand the neutron flux for the operational years required are still imaginary.
For the (a) nuclear waste recycling process, does orbital space offer any advantages?
Not a scientist but I would guess not, since it costs a lot of fuel to shoot something into space
Costs aside, any nuclear material payload isn't going up in a rocket anytime soon considering even the most modern rockets have a 1% failure rate, i.e. kaboom (and widespread radioactive contamination).
💥☢
🚀
Why am i watching this video?
Go and have a look in Sellafield UK. They have a lot of experience with recycling nuclear fuel. The also had a few accidents and the have plenty of cancer in the surrounding area. 😁
Plenty of cancer in China around the silicon smelters used for making solar panels. Same for composites mfg workers and wind turbine blades.
Awesome
Keep in mind that the waste needs to be stored for 10s of millions of years, not tens of thousands as indicated in this video. Plutonium has a half life of a quarter of a million years.
👍👍
We need to switch to nuclear energy entirely
First Uranium/Plutonium reactors, then in 20 years thorium, then eventually nuclear fusion. All the best are nuclear
That's very foolish. Every energy source, especially solar, wind, hydro, geo all have their advtanges and disadvantages. It's good to take advantage of everything we have.
Don't have so much hubris
Shame to throw away so much zirconium along with all the other elements.
It has been massively irradiated and contains fast-neutron bombardment and fission products.
But yes. The whole thing is a waste, including the uranium. In a few centuries or millennia we may need this stuff, and have sufficiently developed technology to use it well rather than wastefully.
Nuclear is NOT cheap at all and even nuclear LOBBYISTS agree. According to the WNSIR report and Reuters: Nuclear is also much more expensive... Solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per MWh, wind power is $29-$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112 and $189.
Only its capital cost is expensive
Once it got its return investment, its cheaper than most electricity generator. And its reliable, can operate 24/7 all year, unlike solar who will basically useless on night and operate in reduced capacity during winter, same goes for wind.
not cheap, but extremely good at making power at a small (way less than solar or wind of a similar power delivery) footprint
use solar energy as you want. if you can.
Capacity and production are not same. It’s disingenuous to mix the two terms and is not proper accounting of energy produced.
🥇♻️
Russia has a nuclear power plant that uses recycled nuclear spent fuel rods. The process used is superior to what is shown in this video. Several countries have attempted to build this type of nuclear reactor and gave up the projects. There are many links to the Russian process on the Internet. Their reactor started operating in 2016 with final success in 2019.
Nope, BN-800 uses MOX formulated from excess weapons plutonium mixed with depleted uranium. These are perhaps the purest and most tractable materials on the planet for making MOX, and they still had a three year delay making it work.
Using spent fuel will involve far less isotopic purity and lower reactivity. The longer the burnup of the spent fuel, the worse it gets. Using spent MOX as a feedstock is not even in the picture for the foreseeable future. The French managed to use about ten tonnes as a test batch, but have several thousand tonnes waiting. Could take a few centuries.
I am a scientist and I have a qualification which involves nuclear safety. I would not like to be a person in 100 years' time who has the responsible for using stored waste to create energy. These things are always OK when they are somebody else's problem. One of the things which should be prohibited is using depleted uranium to make artillery projectiles.
From what i have learned, this is a failed experiment for the most part. :(
Is not really a failed experiment, is just super expensive, that's because any nuclear reprocessing plant that uses the Thorex, Purex, or Urex process basically has hundreeds of not thousands of chemicals steps, to process the elements, separate the fission products, and treat and dispose of all the contaminated solvants, bases, acids, liquids and other streams, that's because it wasn't made for power generation but for making plutonium for warheads in the 1940s at any cost, either economical or enviromental
A much better processing is the electrorefining of molten salts or pyroprocessing that Argonne developed, is actually the same process used to refine copper and rare earth materials but adapted to the nuclear industry.
Correct. It is *highly* energy intensive (nobody talks about how much energy is used throughout the reprocessing of fuel). *Extremely* expensive. *Very* dirty - more high level waste, chemical waste, and radioactive effluent is created through this process than through the initial creation and use of of the fuel itself. This defeats the purpose of nuclear energy from every angle: cost, efficiency, and environmental friendliness.
Another irony is: the main byproduct of the calcination of plutonium oxalate is CO₂ . The very thing the nuclear industry vilifies.
Sounds cheep 😂
Small price to pay to reduce the volume of waste and making the storage of said waste safer
Uranium... is concentrated by evaporation.
Fission products... are concentrated by evaporation.
Plutonium... is concentrated by evaporation.
Wait, what is that blue glow? My mouth tastes like metal.
propaganda
Haha Real science buddy
“Perfect tightness, total safety...” none of this seems safe. ☢️
Fossil fuels are less safe, choose your poison
@@MegoZ_ It depends on how they are extracted, stored, and used.
The fact that they have to constantly exclaim how safe the process is, tells me it's not safe.
I'm sure there's plenty of human error that's eventually gonna lead to a disaster.
Name one such disaster
@@hamanakohamaneko7028 Chernobyl. Fukushima. 3 mile island. Various other meltdowns and disasters in soviet union and usa that they've covered up or we don't mention much in media. Look up a list of nuclear accidents in america and there's WAY more than just 3 mile island
@@aorusaki We are talking about the recycling of nuclear fuel and not the generation of electricity so everything you said is irrelevant
@@aorusakiinform yourself well about these events, chernobyl was the only one that killed a lot of people and its literally impossible to happen again, fukushima was hit by a tsunami of a record breaking height plus even then it wasnt really that bad and three mile island was contained very well.