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Aqueous discharge
Table II.23 Radionuclides discharged from reprocessing plants
(compiled from UNSCEAR, NEA and RECOD’94 [173-176]) (Continued)
Throughput
(GWe-year)
La Hague Sellafield Tokai
Year 1980-85 1986-91 1990-95 1980-85 1986-91 1990-95 –
Tritium
(TBq/GW-year)
Total beta a)
(TBq/GW-year)
Fission product b)
(TBq/GW-year)
Total Alpha
(TBq/GW-year)
a) Excludes tritium.
b) Cs and Sr.
35.7 83.2 143 16.3 8 20.35 –
186 234 242 579 656 557.7 240
174 43.5 4.92 969 96 29.6 10 -5
20.3 3.5 – 784 28 9.6 10 -4
0.1 0.027 6.3×10 -3 8 2.9 0.5 10 -5
The collective dose to the environment has been significantly reduced by installing separation
plants for 137 Cs and 90 Sr and by improving the α decontamination factor in the effluents.
The impact of P&T on these release figures would in a first period only affect the α emitters
(Np, Am and Cm) which would be separated from HLLW. The α-waste discharge due to partitioning
operations [177] is assumed to increase proportionally to the inventory of MAs in HLLW and
represents the Pu+MA process losses in the waste streams. The MA/Pu ratio depends on the burn-up of
the spent fuel, the cooling time and the degree of separation [178]. If the same separation efficiency
were obtained for the MAs as for Pu (99.9%), the increase in α discharge rate, from an advanced
reprocessing operation of LWR fuel at 47 GWd/tHM, would amount to a factor of 2, essentially due to
241 Am and 244 Cm after 10 years cooling time. From this preliminary analysis may be deduced that the
environmental impact of P&T can be limited if the appropriate separation plants are installed on the
same sites as the large plants for LWR fuel reprocessing. In order to compare the different contributions
of each of the fuel cycle operations, the normalised collective effective dose equivalent commitments, for
local and regional populations, are given in man-Sv/GW-year.
From these UNSCEAR 1993 data [174] it appears that uranium mining and milling and LWR
reactor operations are mostly responsible for the local and regional collective doses. Reprocessing and
recycling of U, Pu lower the local and regional collective doses from U mining and milling, but
contribute in their turn to a slight increase in the marine contamination. P&T operations on MAs are
expected to further slightly decrease the uranium needs but not to influence this picture drastically.
A recent study carried out by Cogéma under sponsorship of the European Commission [180]
and presented at GLOBAL’97 [181] provides new data on dose rates to the public resulting from the
fuel cycle operations. The data are expressed in TWhe for the entire fuel cycle including the waste
disposal and transportation doses. For the OTC the total fuel cycle dose amounts to
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