Nuclear fuel cycle
Prof. Christophe Bruggeman – Université de Liège
Prof. Kevin Govers – Université de Liège
3 ECTS
90 hours study time
- 26,5 contact hours theory
- 7 contact hours exersises/laboratory sessions/visits
- 0 hours additional personal work (reading etc.)
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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
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First part – The front-end of the fuel cycle (H. Druenne)
- Description of main U minerals and deposits, and of exploration, ore extraction and treatment techniques
- Conversion of concentrated ores and U enrichment: basic principles of isotopic separation, theory of the cascade (symmetrical cascade) and description of the main techniques (gas diffusion, ulra-centrifugation, LASER and others).
- Choice of the materials, description of the various current commercial core designs and fuel types, and fabrication process.
- Isotopic evolution under irradiation, 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
- Interim storage : description of the main concepts for dry and wet storage
Second part – The back-end of the fuel cycle (C. Bruggeman)
- Categories, inventory of radioactive waste
- Conditioning and immobilisation of radioactive waste
- Characterization of radioactive waste (general; scaling factors; destructive analysis; non-destructive analysis)
- Introduction into radiochemistry (fundamentals; techniques used for radioactive tracers and sources)
- 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
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The PowerPoint presentations of the lectures, and extensive lecture notes, are available on the BNEN website.
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Courses in the following field
- Nuclear energy: introduction
- Introduction to nuclear physics and measurements
Basic chemistry, material sciences, nuclear physics
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- First and second session: Oral examination for each part (weighting factor 50%-50%); written preparation.
- Technical visitis are compulsory and cannot be repeated in the second session (no report required).