Abstract
Nuclear power has been questioned almost since its beginnings and one of the major issues concerning its social acceptability around the world is nuclear waste management. In recent years, these issues have led to a rise in public opposition in some countries and, thus, nuclear energy has been facing even more challenges. However, continuous efforts in R&D (research and development) are resulting in new spent nuclear fuel (SNF) management technologies that might be the pathway towards helping the environment and the sustainability of nuclear energy. Thus, reprocessing and recycling of SNF could be one of the key points to improve the social acceptability of nuclear energy. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to review the state of the nuclear waste management technologies, its evolution through time and the future advanced techniques that are currently under research, in order to obtain a global vision of the nuclear fuel cycle strategies available, their advantages and disadvantages, and their expected evolution in the future.
Highlights
Nuclear energy is a mature technology that has been developing and improving since its beginnings in the 1940s
On the twice-through cycle strategy, spent nuclear fuel (SNF) is reprocessed in order to extract the uranium and plutonium, which can either be recycled as fresh nuclear fuel for its use in a nuclear reactor that is adapted to this type of fuel or sold as raw material
After the initial cooling at the reactor pools, SNF is transported to the reprocessing facility, where the U and the Pu are separated from the minor actinides (MA) and fission products (FP), by means of the PUREX (Plutonium and Uranium Redox Extraction) process [24], which is currently the only commercially available technology
Summary
Nuclear energy is a mature technology that has been developing and improving since its beginnings in the 1940s. The usual arguments against nuclear power are safety concerns, the proliferation risk, its high investment costs, and nuclear waste management Considering these arguments, some countries have decided to cease all their. Despite the evidence presented, there are some political parties that have stated that there are no technical solutions for radioactive waste Another challenge that Spain has been facing regarding SNF management is the recent legislation surrounding nuclear waste, which has considerably increased its management cost. It is essential to know all the technical alternatives available for SNF management and the cost that those technologies entail, while separating political issues from technological needs and while all parties involved cooperate in order to avoid increasing the problems. This paper seeks not to be only a review about technical and economic aspects, but to introduce some of the current lines of discussion that are being considered in the political decision-making process in different countries, especially in Spain
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