Consulting in waste route strategy

Assistance to decision regarding treatments and waste packages adapted to each waste according to its specific environment

• The Challenge

  Route choice for treatment, packaging, storage and transport of a nuclear waste is conditioned by a complex environment: waste history (quantities, radiologic characterization and physical-chemical nature), international standards, technical and scientific state of art, operational and financial constraints, national trend for disposal…

  Each waste family is in a particular situation.

  That is why no standard management strategy can be easily duplicated. Yet, because safety challenges and technical, financial and planning risks are major, each producer has to consider, at the earliest, the strategy which will allow orienting its waste toward an adapted route.

  Leading waste projects without a robust process, which would facilitate this strategic analysis, exposes the producer to an important risk-taking

  
  

• The Solution

  Orano operates fuel cycle facilities which produce nuclear waste of all natures: 

   

  • Operating waste (wear pieces, effluents, resins, filters, PPE…)
  • Waste from facility dismantlement (metallic components, civil engineering)

   

  Orano masters all the steps of waste management projects, whether the production is ended, ongoing or forthcoming: characterization, route of treatment/packaging and disposal, respect of waste acceptance criteria from disposal center and safety authority, interim storage, transport cask conception, or research process implementation allowing to control intermediate term risks when the complete route does not exist yet. 

   

  Whatever the waste classification (low, intermediate or high level), and the particular waste environment, Orano sets up for each a specific orientation strategy which results from its global management process.

   

  The systematic application of this process allows to Orano controlling the risks inherent to each waste project.

   

  Orano provides this experience to the producers so that their decisions concerning waste and route are taken at the right time and in optimal conditions.

   

• Key Features

  Decades of experience in managing its own waste enabled Orano to perfect its strategic orientation process

  Orano manages, in its facilities, all the key steps of its waste projects (characterization, treatment, packaging, storage, waste disposal acceptance criteria from disposal center, shipment and transport)

  Process of specific management updated by multidisciplinary experts' team (waste, regulations, safety, treatment process, finance, project)

  Permanent watch of international rad waste disposal projects

  Provision of all the resources and methodologies available in Orano group, whatever the concerned phase project

   

• Expertise & Experiences

  A dedicated Orano Division for waste conditioning strategy

  • Approval of conditioning for each waste
  • Development and qualification of new waste packages and route

  Strategies deployed, proven and optimized for decades

  • Liquid effluent and solid waste since 1987
  • High-level vitrified waste since 1989
  • Technological low-level waste since 1990
  • Technological intermediate level waste since 2002

  Conclusive results :

  • Production, storage, transport and disposal of more than 60 rad waste package families compatible with surface disposal

  • Annual shipment of more than 6000 m3 of packages to the surface final disposal.

  • Production and storage of 8 different waste package families whose planned final repository is the deep geological disposal (transportability and disposability  of the packages established)

   

• Your Benefits at a glance

  Orano offers to waste producers consulting services based on its own experience.

  • Cost reduction of waste projects by taking into account the risks associated to the particutar situation of each waste family.
  • Establishment of reliable times thanks to the deployment of a strategy adapted to each nuclear waste, favoring the realization of key actions at the right time (not too early, neither too late).
  • Improvement of the « global solution » performance (from characterization and waste treatment to its disposal) thanks to decision assistance brought by an important history, declined for each case.

   

• Q&A

  Above all, Orano wishes to transfer to its customers its own expertise on rad waste route strategy. Depending on the specificities of the rad waste project of its client, Orano will adapt its own methodology and the proposed results will highly depend on specific situation of the waste. The kind of consulting services also highly depends on what is requested by our customers. Thus, Orano is able to propose a large range of services, from short duration workshops to longer studies.

  It also depends on the client needs (project manager, technical of safety expert-in almost any fields of nuclear and waste industry, nuclear logistics, financial engineering…)

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