Centraco (''"Centre nucléaire de traitement et de conditionnement"'', a French "nuclear installation for the treatment and conditioning" of

radioactive waste Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. It is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, nuclear decommissioning, rare-earth mining, and nuclear ...

), is a factory operated by the society for packaging radioactive waste and industrial effluents ( :fr:Cyclife France, formerly :fr:SOCODEI). Located on the

Marcoule nuclear site Marcoule Nuclear Site () is a nuclear facility in the Chusclan and Codolet communes, near Bagnols-sur-Cèze in the Gard department of France, which is in the tourist, wine and agricultural Côtes-du-Rhône region. The plant is around 25 ...

in an area of 11 hectares in the Codolet commune (

Gard Gard () is a department in Southern France, located in the region of Occitanie. It had a population of 748,437 as of 2019;Nuclear waste Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. It is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, nuclear decommissioning, rare-earth mining, and nuclear ...

treated by Centraco are very low, low and intermediate activity (TFA, FMA). They come from the nuclear industry (mainly from

EDF EDF may refer to: Organisations * Eclaireurs de France, a French Scouting association * Électricité de France, a French energy company ** EDF Energy, their British subsidiary ** EDF Luminus, their Belgian subsidiary * Environmental Defense Fund, ...

and

Areva Areva S.A. was a French multinational group specializing in nuclear power, active between 2001 and 2018. It was headquartered in Courbevoie, France. Before its 2016 corporate restructuring, Areva was majority-owned by the French state through t ...

), research centers (Atomic Energy Commission, CEA), and small producers such as hospitals and universities. Types of waste treated in the plant: * Metallic objects from maintenance operations in controlled area and the dismantling of

nuclear power plant A nuclear power plant (NPP), also known as a nuclear power station (NPS), nuclear generating station (NGS) or atomic power station (APS) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power st ...

s; * Burnable (i.e., incinerable) waste, mainly gloves and overalls; * Liquid

waste Waste are unwanted or unusable materials. Waste is any substance discarded after primary use, or is worthless, defective and of no use. A by-product, by contrast is a joint product of relatively minor Value (economics), economic value. A wast ...

such as cleaning solutions,

oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) and lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturate ...

solvent A solvent (from the Latin language, Latin ''wikt:solvo#Latin, solvō'', "loosen, untie, solve") is a substance that dissolves a solute, resulting in a Solution (chemistry), solution. A solvent is usually a liquid but can also be a solid, a gas ...

resins A resin is a solid or highly viscous liquid that can be converted into a polymer. Resins may be biological or synthetic in origin, but are typically harvested from plants. Resins are mixtures of organic compounds, predominantly terpenes. Comm ...

, and

sludge Sludge (possibly , or some dialect related to slush) is a semi-solid slurry that can be produced from a range of industrial processes, from water treatment, wastewater treatment or on-site sanitation systems. It can be produced as a settled sus ...

s from nuclear installations.

Waste treatment

The main goal is to minimize the waste volume before it is conditioned and packaged. The Centraco plant consists of two main units dealing with waste by type: * The melting of metals * The incineration plant for burnable waste and liquid effluents. Residues from each unit are mixed with a conditioning matrix and then packaged. The final volume of waste is reduced by a factor of 10.

The incineration plant

The furnace of the incineration plant consists of three chambers: * A primary chamber with a temperature of 900 – 1000 °C * A secondary chamber with a temperature of 1100 – 1200 °C * A tertiary chamber. Solid waste is fed into the primary chamber. Liquid waste is injected either in the primary chamber, or in the secondary chamber according to their chemical composition and thermal power output. The

ash Ash is the solid remnants of fires. Specifically, ''ash'' refers to all non-aqueous, non- gaseous residues that remain after something burns. In analytical chemistry, to analyse the mineral and metal content of chemical samples, ash is the ...

es and

slag The general term slag may be a by-product or co-product of smelting (pyrometallurgical) ores and recycled metals depending on the type of material being produced. Slag is mainly a mixture of metal oxides and silicon dioxide. Broadly, it can be c ...

s are collected and immobilized within a cementitious matrix. They are then packed in metal drums and shipped to the National Agency for Radioactive Waste ( ANDRA). The incinerator has a rated capacity of 5000 tons of waste / year. An explosion on September 12, 2011, caused the death of an employee, and injured four others. This happened in a furnace at the site of reprocessing nuclear waste at

Marcoule Marcoule Nuclear Site () is a nuclear facility in the Chusclan and Codolet communes, near Bagnols-sur-Cèze in the Gard department of France, which is in the tourist, wine and agricultural Côtes-du-Rhône region. The plant is around 25 k ...

. It was an "industrial accident" and not "nuclear accident".

The furnace

The

smelter Smelting is a process of applying heat and a chemical reducing agent to an ore to extract a desired base metal product. It is a form of extractive metallurgy that is used to obtain many metals such as iron, copper, silver, tin, lead and zin ...

includes an

induction furnace An induction furnace is an electrical furnace in which the heat is applied by induction heating of metal. Induction furnace capacities range from less than one kilogram to one hundred tons, and are used to melt iron and steel, copper, aluminu ...

for the manufacture of

ingots An ingot is a piece of relatively pure material, usually metal, that is cast into a shape suitable for further processing. In steelmaking, it is the first step among semi-finished casting products. Ingots usually require a second procedure of sh ...

and metal ferrules. The metals are melted in the furnace at 1600 °C. Impurities are removed manually, then the molten metal is poured into a ladle and is then cast into ingots, or centrifuged to form a tube. The ingots, cylinders of about 1.5 ton, are considered as final waste products of low and intermediate activity and then sent to the Storage Center of Aube (Centre de Stockage de l'Aube, CSA) in

Soulaines-Dhuys Soulaines-Dhuys () is a commune in the Aube department of the Grand Est region of northern France. Population See also *Communes of the Aube department The following is a list of the 431 communes of the Aube department of France ...

for long-term storage (300 years) on surface. The steel tubes are recycled for manufacturing

gamma radiation A gamma ray, also known as gamma radiation (symbol ), is a penetrating form of electromagnetic radiation arising from high energy interactions like the radioactive decay of atomic nuclei or astronomical events like solar flares. It consists o ...

shields for medium-level waste (MLW) such as inner shells, or internal shielding, for ''γ''-irradiating drums, allowing so the reuse of part of the metallic waste.

External links

*
Official website

References

{{authority control Nuclear research institutes Nuclear technology companies of France Nuclear waste companies Buildings and structures in Gard Industrial buildings completed in 1956 20th-century architecture in France