[L’instant tech] At the CEA, the treatment of nuclear waste applied to batteries and solar panels

2023-09-26 09:00:00

With a white coat on her back, an operator manipulates, using a huge articulated arm, a clamp located inside an armored box. Between it and the gripping tool, a one meter thick wall made sometimes of concrete, sometimes of leaded glazing. The protection necessary for handling a bottle containing spent nuclear fuel, and therefore still radioactive. In this room of the Atalante laboratory, within the CEA center in Marcoule (Gard), the first stage of nuclear waste recycling takes place: the bundles of fuel rods are cut into sections, before being dissolved in an acid solution.

The spent fuel is still composed of 95% plutonium and uranium. To manipulate it, CEA Marcoule researchers use “armored chains”.

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