Jean-Claude Amiard - Management of Radioactive Waste

The British classification of radioactive waste adopts the IAEA classification into five categories by defining its own criteria for activity levels ( Table 1.3).

Table 1.3. The British nuclear waste classification system (source: [OJO 14, RAH 15])

The Russian classification of radioactive waste is based on a division into three classes according to the specific activity of various categories of radionuclides ( Table 1.4). The limits of the categories are high.

Table 1.4. Practical classification of radioactive waste in Russia (source: [OJO 14])

Various comparisons can be made between the classifications of radioactive waste used by different countries.

The classification recommended by the IAEA and that applied by the United States have no overlap ( Table 1.5).

Table 1.5. Comparison of IAEA ([IAE 09a], GSG-1) and NRC ([NRC 15]) classifications (source: [NEA 16a])

In Belgium, class A waste has a specific destination and class B and C waste are managed together. In France, the VLLW and LLW-SL categories are managed together, the AA-LL and HALL categories are managed together, while the FA-VL category is managed independently. For the three states, a distinction is made between current waste and historical waste [PAR 18].

Table 1.6. Comparison of radioactive waste classifications in Belgium, France and Canada (source: [PAR 18]). In brackets, the equivalences with the IAEA classification from 2009 [IAE 09a]

For sealed sources, the IAEA [IAE 09a] recommends the classifications reported in Table 1.7.

Table 1.7. Examples of the use of the IAEA classification for disused sealed radioactive sources (source: [IAE 09a])

Radioactive waste has multiple origins, which can be subdivided into three main sources: waste from the fuel cycle contributing to nuclear electricity (NFC, Nuclear Fuel Cycle), waste from other very varied origins (medicine, research, etc.) and waste resulting from a nuclear accident. Fuel cycle waste differs according to whether it comes from upstream or downstream plants or from nuclear power reactors in operation ( Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2. Diagram of the origins of radioactive waste (source: [OJO 14]). HLW: high-level waste; ILW: intermediate-level waste; LLW: low-level waste; NFC: nuclear fuel cycle; SRS: sealed radioactive sources. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/amiard/radioactive.zip

The principal radionuclides in radioactive waste are very varied and can be classified into four categories. These are fission products (H, Se, Br, Kr, Rb, Sr, Y, Mo, Tc, Ru, Rh, Pd, Ag, Cd, In, Sn, Sb, Te, I, Xe, Cs, Ba, La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Pm, Sm, Eu, Gd, Tb and Dy), activation products (C, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, and Ni) and heavy nuclei (U, Nb and Zr), those that are both fission and activation products (Zr and Nb), heavy nuclei (U, Np, Pu, Am and Cm) and some elements with long-lived radioactive isotopes (C, Zr, Tc, Pd, Sn, I, Cs and Sm) to which are added the five heavy nuclei elements.