Why aren't more nuclear power plants using incineration for waste treatment?

[FlyingEng]

Folks,

I have found a company in the web which is offering incineration of nuclear waste.

I was wondering why not more NPPs are using incineration as the treatment of burnable waste? It seems to be the standard in Japan and some NPPs in eastern europe and russia. why not in europe or the us??

what are the points? I think its useful as the volume is the smallest and the waste can be stored easily.


looking forward for replys...

FE

 

[minerva]

Incineration, of course, doesn't destroy radionuclides. It can be used, however, to treat low-level contaminated waste such as used protective clothing; burning it reduces the volume of the radioactive waste.

But the fact is, the volume of radioactive waste just isn't a real problem.

 

[nismaratwork]

Incineration, of course, doesn't destroy radionuclides. It can be used, however, to treat low-level contaminated waste such as used protective clothing; burning it reduces the volume of the radioactive waste.

But the fact is, the volume of radioactive waste just isn't a real problem.

The attitudes and political paralysis in terms of storage is the issue.

 

[FlyingEng]

Well I do understand that no radionuclides will be destroyed but the volume reduction is magnificent.
As I know the AP 1000 for example is producing a lot of spent resin which will be cemented afterwards. The volume is increasing by 70 percent !
If we would burn or pyrolyse this resin we could cut the volume into a couple of percent!

The volume reduction is magnificent and I was just wondering why no one is following this treatment. In Japan they have Incineration facilities because it is not allowed to transport flammable liquids from NPP's. So every NPP has it's own Incineration facility.

I assume if we would count storage costs against the Incinerator it would be a great advantage.

 

[MattyHazza]

I agree with FlyingEng. The cost of purchasing high integrity waste packages is significant.

For low-end ILW, where activity levels are such that a greater volume of material can be placed in a single package, greater size reduction would provide considerable benefits.