www.elsevier.com/locate/pnucene

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

Progress in Nuclear Energy 49 (2007) 583e588

French experiences and perspectives on plutoniumrecycling in the existing power fleet*

Patrice Bernard

AREVA e COGEMA Recycling Business Unit, BP94176, 30204 Bagnols-sur-Ceze Cedex, France

Abstract

Treatment and recycling has been implemented in France from the very beginning of nuclear energy deployment. With the oilshocks in 1973 and 1979, very large scale industrial deployment of LWRs has then been conducted, with now 58 PWRs producing80% of the total electricity. Modern large scale treatment and recycling facilities have been constructed in the same period: LaHague treatment facilities and MELOX recycling plant. Important industrial feedback results from operation and optimizationof fuel cycle backend facilities, which is summarized in the paper. Then are discussed perspectives with recycling.� 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Keywords: AREVA; Recycling industrial experience; Lessons learned; Fuel cycle optimization; MOX; MELOX

1. Introduction

Fuel cycle issues have been playing a structuring role through the different generations of nuclear reactors devel-oped and industrially deployed (or at the demonstration/prototype stage) since 50 years.

For instance the development of the 1st generation of reactors e such as with natural uranium fuel, graphite mod-erator and cooled by gas e was driven by fuel cycle issues: use of natural uranium as local industrial enrichmentfacilities was unavailable at that time, spent fuel treatment capabilities, plutonium recovery and recycling.

Economy, industrial scale and standardization have been the main driving forces for the implementation of the 2ndgeneration of reactors now in operation.

The 3rd generation advanced reactors take full benefit of most recent technological improvements to meet safety,competitiveness and fuel cycle goals (with respect to higher burn up, improved uranium consumption, higher MOXloading and plutonium consumption capabilities). They represent the most advanced reactors at industrial maturity,and their deployment is considered for the replacement of existing 2nd generation PWRs and additional nuclearenergy production capacities.

Fast neutron reactors, precursor to 4th generation systems now under R&D within international cooperation, havebeen developed from the 60s, up to the demonstration and prototype scale, with related fuel cycle facilities, withaiming at long term fuel cycle benefits: breeding uranium, quasi-unlimited plutonium recycling capabilities.

* Red Impact Workshop ‘‘Long Term Management Options for Separated Plutonium’’ Cambridge, July 11th, 2005.

E-mail address: patrice-pierre.bernard@areva.com

0149-1970/$ - see front matter � 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

doi:10.1016/j.pnucene.2007.08.005

584 P. Bernard / Progress in Nuclear Energy 49 (2007) 583e588

Important industrial experience and lessons learned result from this deployment, with more than 40 years of indus-trial experience with recycling operation and optimization.

Fundamentally, spent fuel treatment and recycling option do anchor nuclear energy in sustainability by bringingmajor clarification and optimization routes, by:

� recovering valuable materials, in a safe and proliferation resistant approach, and saving energy resources,� dividing by 10 the radio toxicity and by five the HLW volume, with very safe conditioning providing long lasting

confinement, the HLW being then:B much more simple to manage in time (suitable for heat generation decay in compact, safe and robust interim

storage facilities; easy to safely remove and retrieve; reinforcing performance and demonstration of multi-barrier confinement of radio nuclides in a deep geological repository, thanks to the glass matrix long termconfinement capability [[10,000 years] and to the low inventory of long term radio toxicity),

B final waste, with almost all fissile material requiring safeguards removed, and transfer of responsibility can besimpler.

� contributing to non-proliferation by burning plutonium and with making its isotopic composition more prolifer-ation resistant.

2. Early nuclear energy industrial deployment

Spent fuel treatment and recycling have been developed and implemented from the very beginning of nuclearenergy deployment (Bernard, 2005).

For instance in France, the UP1 facility at Marcoule began operation in 1958 and UP2 facility at La Hague in 1966(both treating the spent fuel from the 1st generation natural uranium reactors) and the uraniumeplutonium oxide fastneutron reactors fabrication in the Cadarache ATPu facility started in 1965, with quite significant experience records,with the completion of the Rapsodie (in operation in 1967), Phenix (1973) and Super-Phenix (1985) UePu core loads(Fig. 1).

Experience drawn from this first phase has shown that:

� Treatment of intermediate burn up spent metallic fuel at industrial scale has been successful.� Fabrication at a significant scale of UePu oxide fuel for fast neutron, with quite good performances in reactors

operation, has been demonstrated.

40

1965 1967 1969 1971 1973 1975 1977 1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003

annual quantities

R +

D

Ra

ps

od

ie

Ph

én

ix

Su

pe

rp

hé

nix

2

+

3

Su

pe

rp

hé

nix

1

MOX

Metric to

ns

Fig. 1. Annual Cadarache production.

585P. Bernard / Progress in Nuclear Energy 49 (2007) 583e588

� Vitrification of final waste has been demonstrated, providing quite significant volume reduction and very safelong lasting conditioning of radioactive HLW.1

� Volume reduction of ILW2 was not at that time as effective as for HLW, and this has been improved verysignificantly in the next industrial phases.

3. Recycling operational experience at high industrial scale and overall optimization

With the oil shocks in 1973 and 1979, very large scale industrial deployment of 2nd generation PWRs has beenconducted in France.

For instance, in France this has led to the present situation with EDF’s 58 PWRs producing 80% of electricity inFrance.

In order to provide spent oxide fuel treatment and recycling services for EDF, and for other European andoverseas, in particular Japan, customers, industrial capabilities have been developed and constructed using upto date technologies, in the 80s and early 90s: treatment facilities at La Hague, UP3 (800 tHM/year, operationstarted in 1990) and UP2-800 (800 tHM/year, operation started in 1994), and at Marcoule the recycling facilityMELOX for MOX fabrication (initial MOX throughput 100 tHM/year, operation started in 1995).

Such an industrial deployment has clearly demonstrated the industry’s capability to design, build and start opera-tion of a major nuclear energy system (reactors and fuel cycle facilities) in a short period of time.

By now, major industrial experience records do exist:

� Some 20,000 tHM of spent LWR fuel have been treated at La Hague, with very effective optimization (volumeof solid residues and a, b, g radioactivity in liquid discharged, have been divided by 10).� Some 2000 tHM of MOX have been produced by COGEMA (Cadarache and MELOX) and Belgonucleaire,

involved in the COMMOX joint venture led by COGEMA (Fig. 2). MELOX plant (Krellmann, 2005), afterreaching initial authorized capacity of 100 tHM/year only in two years after start up in 1995, is now reach-ing increased authorized capacity of 145 tHM/year and has developed effective diversification in its products(both PWR and BWR MOX fuels, with different designs and technologies), with the ambition of reachingthe plant’s full production potential at around 200 tHM/year in the future (Fig. 3).� Environmental impact of these industrial activities is very low, carefully monitored and openly reported.� Since three decades 36 LWRs in Europe have been routinely burning MOX fuel (Figs. 4 and 5), including 20

PWRs in France, where plutonium recycling produces by now more than 10% of the electricity from the re-actors’ fleet, with reducing by more than 10% the natural uranium consumption and avoiding related cost of

Cumulative production of MOX fuel pellets (tHM)

1 840.4 tHM of MOX fuel pellets produced by end of 2004.

DESSEL

CADARACHE

MELOX

0

500

1000

1500

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

COGEMA

67 %

BELGONUCLEAIRE

33 %

885.1 tHM

344.9 tHM

610.4 tHM

Fig. 2. Cumulative production of MOX fuel pellets in tons of heavy metal (tHM).

1 HLW: High level waste.2 ILW: Intermediate level waste.

586 P. Bernard / Progress in Nuclear Energy 49 (2007) 583e588

uranium enrichment. Operational experience in reactors (PWR and BWR) has demonstrated the high qualityof MOX fuel fabricated (Fig. 6). MOX fuel behavior in reactors is similar to UO2 fuel.� Overall industrial management of materials and logistics has been implemented and demonstrated (optimizing

production, stocks, interim storage, transportations, secondary waste.).� Overall economy of nuclear energy with recycling has been consolidated, and shows that the fuel cycle recycling

and backend costs are only 5e6% in the total kWh cost of electricity (Bouchard et al., 2003), already quitecompetitive versus other electricity production sources.

4. Perspectives

Quite convincing consolidation of industrial nuclear energy with recycling has been clearly demonstrated.Further steps and optimization routes can be considered (Fig. 7):

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005*

2nd authorization (145 t)

1st authorization (100 t)

*Objective 2005 (145 t)

3d authorization request to 195 t in September 2004

1,000 tHM production

2,000 assemblies fabricated

A constant increase and diversification in MELOX productions since 2002

Fig. 3. Production development at MELOX.

Germany

Switzerland

France

Belgium

Reactors in

operation

MOX

authorized

reactors

" Moxified "

reactors First MOX loading date

21

5

58

7

11

4

20

2

11

3

20

2

1972

1984

1987

1995

MOX, a recycling solution used for more

than 30 years

Fig. 4. MOX review in Europe.

587P. Bernard / Progress in Nuclear Energy 49 (2007) 583e588

� MOX e UO2 fuel equivalence in terms of burn up achieved which would simplify reactor core management.� Increased uranium recycling.� Increased MOX recycling capabilities in 3rd generation LWRs making it possible to load cores with 100%

MOX.� First generation spent MOX fuel treatment, which has been demonstrated in the industrial facilities at La Hague,

and 2nd generation plutonium recycling in MOX.

It is also important to master the consequences for the industrial facilities of increased spent fuel burn up and evolv-ing actinides’ isotopic composition.

Doel

Tihange

Unterweser

Chinon

Saint-Laurent

Le Blayais

Tricastin

PWR BWR 36 "moxified" reactors in Europe

Brokdorf

Grohnde

Grafenrheinfeld

Obrigheim

Beznau

Philippsburg

Isar

Neckar

Gundremmingen II

Gosgen

20

2

11

3

2 3 41

21

B2B1

B2 B3 B4B1

Gravelines B2 B3 B4B1

Dampierre 2 3 41

3

2

2

21

2

2

CB

Emsland

Fig. 5. Reactors cores having been routinely burning MOX fuel.

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62Burn-up (CW d/t)

Num

ber o

f ass

embl

ies

BWR PWR

More than 30 years operational experience in reactors (PWR & BWR) have demonstrated thehigh quality of MOX fuel fabricated by AREVA.

MOX fuel behavior in reactor is similar to UO2 fuel, in normal and incidental conditions.

Fig. 6. Irradiation rate of 2544 MOX fuel unloaded supplied by AREVA (end 2004).

588 P. Bernard / Progress in Nuclear Energy 49 (2007) 583e588

With present worldwide energy and environment major challenges: climate change, high fossil fuels prices andprospective future shortage, the perspective of nuclear energy new deployment e new additional reactors and replace-ment of the old ones e is building up, whose sustainability calls for recycling.

In the long term, 4th generation fast neutron reactors should broaden again fuel cycle optimization with increasedactinide recycling capabilities (multiple recycling, actinide isotopic high flexibility.) and uranium breeding, andthen ensuring very long term energy resource. Demonstrating the 4th generation systems is a major challenginggoal for R&D within international cooperation.

At present, thanks to years of feedback in spent fuel treatment and MOX fabrication, demonstration has been madethat capabilities exist for several decades of recycling in LWRs. This replaces the early vision of treatment of thermalneutron reactors’ spent fuel to recover plutonium that was only planned to be recycled in fast neutron reactors. Steadyindustrial deployment of the fuel backend indeed relies on a step by step implementation, once industrial technologieshave matured.

Commercial nuclear reactors in the several next decades should mainly be of 2nd and 3rd generation, due to:

� their lifetime is in the range of >40 years (2nd generation) to 60 years (3rd generation),� at medium term the commercial response to growing needs of new nuclear energy production will be 3rd gen-

eration reactors.

One must also consider that at present in the order of 200,000 metric tons of spent fuel are stored worldwide. Theirtreatment would allow to recover the w95% of recyclable uranium and plutonium they still contain.

Convincing perspective does exist for industrial recycling, making it possible by now to recover valuable materialsfor producing competitive CO2 free energy, and to optimize HLW management thanks to volume minimization, radiotoxicity reduction and safe long term flexibility.

References

Bernard, P., 2005. Fuel cycle optimization: French industry experience with recycling, and perspectives. In: Global 2005 Conference, Tsukuba,

Japan, October 2005.

Bouchard, J., Proust, E., Gautrot, J.J., Tinturier, B., 2003. Economics of nuclear energy production systems: reactors and fuel cycle. In: Global

2003 Conference, New Orleans, USA, November 2003.

Krellmann, J., 2005. Advanced high throughput MOX fuel fabrication technology & sustainable development. In: Global 2005 Conference,

Tsukuba, Japan, October 2005.

MOX – UOX equivalence (burn up…)

Increased RepU recycling

Increased MOX recycling capabilities (100% MOX cores) in advanced 3d

generation LWRs

Spent MOX fuel treatment and next plutonium recycling in MOX

MOX

UOX

Control

rods

EPRPWR 900

Fig. 7. Further steps and optimization routes.