Waste management - how?
Wastes
Types of radioactive waste
High-level waste
Management of spent fuel
Low- and intermediate-level waste
Volumes
Transport
Radiation and radioactive waste
Transmutation
Waste producers
Nuclear power plants
Nuclear fuel cycle
Reprocessing
Operational waste from NPPs
Decommissioning of NPPs
Medicine, industry and research
Waste management concept
Waste management programme
Why deep geological disposal?
Ethics and responsibility
Waste management options
Demonstration of disposal feasibility
Long-term safety
Retrievability
Deep geological repositories
Geological repository HLW
Geological repository LLW
Waste management today
Packaging
Interim storage
Waste inventories
Natural analogues
Natural analogues for engineered barriers
Natural analogues for glass
Natural analogues for metal
Natural analogues for clay
Natural analogues for geological barriers
Geological barriers – cristalline rock
Geological barriers – clay
Example ammonite
Example salt deposit
Natural reactors
Research
Laboratory studies
Rock laboratories
Grimsel
Geology
Experiments
Mont Terri
Geology
Experiments
Other countries
Belgium
Finland
France
Germany
The Netherlands
Spain
Sweden
United Kingdom
Canada
Japan
USA
Low- and intermediate-level waste
Besides high-level waste, the nuclear power plants also produce low- and intermediate-level waste. This waste is prepared for deep disposal either at the power plant sites or at ZWILAG in Würenlingen. The plasma furnace at ZWILAG is used to melt various types of low-level waste, which then solidify to a slag-type mass.
Raw waste from medicine, industry and research is processed into a form suitable for disposal at the Paul Scherrer Institute or at ZWILAG and is then stored in the Federal Government’s interim storage facility (BZL) in Würenlingen.
Reprocessing of spent fuel elements also produces low- and intermediate-level waste (e.g. structural components of the fuel elements).
