Origin and characteristics of raw waste

Any transformation of radioactive material, whether natural or artificial, in the various branches of radioactivity use and nuclear power (civil and military) leads to effluents, process waste and technological waste (see Box 1). For today's thermal neutron reactors, whatever they may be, the energy equivalent of one tonne of natural uranium is of the order of 10 ⁵ toe (combustion rate of 6 to 8 GWj/t). We should therefore expect little waste from the exploitation of nuclear power. Although the quantities of gross waste are indeed very small compared with the quantities of combustion waste from other fossil resources, for an equivalent service and settlement, the nature of nuclear waste seriously complicates its operational management. Raw radioactive waste is the result both of the technologies used to operate the various types of nuclear reactors,...