Nuclear fuel cycle (Centre d'étude nucléaire-Mol)

Language

English

Aims

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :
1	The objective is to provide students an overall view of the fuel cycle, from cradle to grave: The front-end of the fuel cycle: ore extraction, conversion and enrichment, fuel fabrication and use in the power plant, spent fuel reprocessing and recycling of re-enriched reprocessed U and Pu as MOX in PWR. The back-end of the fuel cycle: the radioactive waste management, ranging from waste characteristics, waste treatment technologies, disposal technologies, safety assessment of geologic disposal.

Content

First part -The front-end of the fuel cycle   (H Druenne)

• Uranium extraction and treatment of ores; worldwide resources ;Conversion of concentrated ores ;
• U enrichment: Basic principles of isotopic separation. Theory of the cascade (symmetrical cascade) and description of the main techniques;
• Fabrication process and description of the various current commercial fuel types;
• Basics of the in-core fuel management;
• Isotopic evolution under irradiation regarding residual heat and source term;
• Reprocessing of UO2 fuel elements: description of the PUREX process ;
• Recycling of U and Pu: technology and industrial limits, equivalence principle and MOX neutronic design;
• Interim storage : description of the main concepts for dry and wet storage.

Second part -The back-end of the fuel cycle  (P. Van Iseghem)

• Categories, inventory of radioactive waste 
• Conditioning and immobilisation of radioactive waste
• Characterization of radioactive waste (general; scaling factors; destructive analysis; non-destructive analysis)
• Assessment of the safety of geological disposal (methodology; some typical results from the safety assessment)
• Impact of new fuel cycles on radioactive waste disposal
• Geological repositories: key criteria for designing a disposal concept, overview of ongoing international programmes, and discussion of the Belgian supercontainer concept.
• Technical visits to the Belgoprocess facility and to the ESV underground research laboratory in clay on the SCK-CEN site

Evaluation methods

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, the information in this section is particularly likely to change.

Oral examination; written preparation

Other information

This course is part of the Advanced Master programme in nuclear engineering organized by the Belgian Nuclear Higher Education Network (BNEN).  BNEN is organised through a consortium of six Belgian universities and the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre, SCK-CEN and takes place at the SCK-CEN in Mol.
Prof. Pierre Van Iseghem -Université de Liège
Prof. Hubert Druenne- Université de Liège

Online resources

https://www.sckcen.be/fbnen

Faculty or entity

EPL