7. Recycling

Scrap is produced at every stage of processing, from the manufacture of Zr sponge to the semi-finished products leaving the plant: tubes, sheets, strips, bars, wires, etc. The same applies to finished product manufacturers. The same applies to manufacturers of finished products: for example, in the case of the plugs that close the ends of nuclear power plant casing tubes, one tonne of plugged bars yields around 500 kg of plugs and therefore 500 kg of shavings.

In the case of Zr and its alloys, these are expensive products in which the price of the metal clearly outweighs the processing costs. In terms of energy costs, for example, the energy required to produce one kilogram of raw Zr from ore is around 130 kWh. This is much higher than the simple remelting of scrap in a consumable electrode furnace, which represents only 1.5 to 2 kWh per...