ITER Waste Management: The Recycling and Clearance Option

To minimize the amount of radioactive waste requiring permanent disposal may strongly influence the environmental acceptability of fusion power. The waste management strategy applied here to the activated waste of ITER achieves this goal by maximizing recycling (reuse of the material) and clearance (declassification to non active waste). Limits of the surface dose rates of the waste after an interim storage of 50 years define various recycling procedures. The possibility of clearance is assessed from limits of the specific activity of the waste. These limits depend on the relative hazard of the radionuclides contained in the waste.

It turns out that only a small part of ITER materials have such a radioactivity as to prevent its recycling or clearance (namely, first wall and front blanket). Most of the blanket and all the vessel may be recycled by remote handling. All the other components can be cleared or “hands-on” recycled.