Nuclear fuel cycle industry generates a wide variety of wastes some of which are composed of variable mixtures of organic, metallic and mineral materials. These wastes, contaminated with transuranic elements, mainly plutonium and americium, need a specific conditioning solution for deep geological disposal.
A thermal treatment process has extensively been studied these last years through the PIVIC project (Process for Incineration and Vitrification In Can). In this process, the waste first undergoes an incineration step to achieve destruction of the organic fraction, followed by the melt of the mineral residues as well as the metallic materials. The two steps PIVIC core process is performed in an integrated reactor taking advantage of combination of advanced technological components such as oxygen plasma torch and in can low frequency direct induction to achieve the highest level of process compactness. The PCM (plutonium contaminated material) waste is transferred from its original drum to an appropriate feeding basket without any preprocessing (grinding for instance) nor sorting operation. The process output is composed of a dense multiphasic glass/metal package which allows volume reduction and immobilization of the radionuclides in an inert matrix.
Following the commissioning of an inactive prototype of the PIVIC process in 2018 at the CEA R&D vitrification facility in Marcoule site, an R&D program has been carried out to provide proof of concept. This R&D collaborative project, conducted with Orano, CEA and Andra, was supported by the French government program “Programme d’Investissements d’Avenir”.
This poster intends to describe the features of the PIVIC process, and to present the scientific and technical issues as well as the main results and achievements obtained after 4 year of tests and developments.