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      Investigation into the Current State of Nuclear Energy and Nuclear Waste Management—A State-of-the-Art Review

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      Energies
      MDPI AG

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          Abstract

          Nuclear power can replace fossil fuels and will have a decisive impact on the change in the approach to conventional energy. However, nuclear (or radioactive) wastes are produced by the operation of the nuclear reactors should be safely and properly disposed of. This paper assesses the uranium resources and the global state of nuclear power plants and determines the energy mixes in different countries using the most nuclear energy. Furthermore, this paper analysed the nuclear waste management and disposal and the depletion of abiotic resources, and the primary energy sources of a basic production process using electricity mix and nuclear electricity for a basic production (PET bottle manufacturing) process. The life cycle assessment was completed by applying the GaBi 8.0 (version 10.6) software and the CML method. In this study, we limit our discussion to high-level nuclear waste (HLW) and spent nuclear fuel (SNF) waste. We do not consider waste generated from uranium mining and milling, which is usually disposed of in near-surface impoundments close to the mine or the mill. The investigation of waste management methods is limited to European countries. This research work is relevant because determining abiotic resources is important in a life cycle assessment and current literature available on LCA analysis for nuclear powers remains under-developed. These results can guide and compare manufacturing processes involving a nuclear electricity and electricity grid mix input. The results of this research can be used to develop production processes using nuclear energy with lower abiotic depletion impacts. This research work facilitates the industry in making predictions for a production-scale plant using an LCA of production processes with nuclear energy consumption.

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          Most cited references43

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          Nuclear waste forms for actinides

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            A proposal for the definition of resource equivalency factors for use in product life-cycle assessment

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              The Beishan underground research laboratory for geological disposal of high-level radioactive waste in China: Planning, site selection, site characterization and in situ tests

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                (View ORCID Profile)
                Journal
                ENERGA
                Energies
                Energies
                MDPI AG
                1996-1073
                June 2022
                June 10 2022
                : 15
                : 12
                : 4275
                Article
                10.3390/en15124275
                b458deb9-78de-4e4e-895f-b7857a51f3f5
                © 2022

                https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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