Cyclife took part in the Waste Management Symposium in Phoenix from 5 to 9 March 2017, with the support of EDF, Cyclife Sweden and Socodei.
This symposium takes place every year in Phoenix and enables actors of the nuclear waste and dismantling field to exchange on the new practices, innovations and specific issues. This year Japan was the featured country.
Cyclife had a booth that gave the participants the opportunity to discover the brand and to deepen their knowledge about Cyclife industrial capacities.
EDF and Cyclife made different presentations. EDF notably pointed out its works on the management of control rods to limit the volume of Intermediate Activity Long-lived Waste.
During operation, the PWR control rods are either completely extracted (scram or safety rods) or partially inserted in the operating zone of the core (fine control or operating rods). Since the insertion is limited to a few tens of cm, only the lower part of the control rods are subjected to a significant neutron flux with an impact on the neutron activation and so on the waste classification (Low Activity Short-lived Waste versus Intermediate Activity Long-lived Waste).
Measuring, cutting and finally sorting control rod scraps could reduce the volume of Intermediate Activity Long-lived Waste planned for EDF intermediate storage facility “ICEDA”.
EDF presented methodologies used to determine the sort criteria between the Low Activity Short-lived Waste versus the Intermediate Activity Long-lived Waste zones for the control rods of “Bugey 2”, a 900 MW PWR.
