Joint venture to establish GeoMelt vitrification technologies : Squander & Recycling

01 December 2021

France’s EDF and water, squander and electrical power management business Veolia will early following calendar year generate a joint enterprise – to be recognised as Waste2Glass – to develop Veolia’s GeoMelt vitrification know-how. The associates hope to increase the software of the technological innovation outside of high-amount radioactive squander.

GeoMelt glass (Graphic: Veolia)

Produced in 1980 by the US Office of Energy’s Pacific Northwest Nationwide Laboratory, the GeoMelt procedure immobilises radioactive squander in a glass matrix to generate a stable and strong waste variety that is straightforward to transportation and shop. GeoMelt has by now been utilised to take care of 26,000 tonnes of radioactive and dangerous squander, specifically at sites including Hanford in the United states of america and Sellafield in the United kingdom. The technologies was obtained in 2012 by US radioactive waste management specialist Kurion, which Veolia acquired in 2016.

Waste2Glass will be centered in Limay in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It will be near a new pilot device that will include the GeoMelt system, a short while ago commissioned by Veolia to carry out demonstrations and obtain the certifications demanded for the industrial deployment of the system.

“Due to its technological character and expense, vitrification has until eventually now been reserved for remarkably radioactive squander,” EDF and Veolia stated in a joint assertion. “Thanks to the complementary know-how of the two associates, Waste2Glass will be capable to get up the problem of the industrial deployment of the GeoMelt engineering, which will make it possible to broaden and simplify the use of the vitrification system for a broader vary of waste kinds.”

In December 2019, EDF and Veolia proven the Graphitech joint venture for the technological progress and engineering scientific studies necessary in preparing for decommissioning nuclear reactors that use graphite technological know-how. The venture will build distant-operated tools to break up elaborate, huge-scale concrete and steel structures, as nicely as tools to extract activated graphite bricks and piles. It will also style systems and articulated arms to permit deployment of these instruments.

“Our enterprise and our goal as a environment leader of the ecological transformation is to present modern systems and answers for the administration of elaborate squander such as harmful and radioactive waste,” explained Veolia Chairman and CEO Antoine Frérot. “I am delighted that we have taken this even further move in our collaboration with EDF with the development of Waste2Glass. It will permit a real alter of scale as a result of the industrialisation of GeoMelt, which will make it doable to handle radioactive waste more safely and securely and additional economically, with a reduction in storage volumes.”

EDF Chairman and CEO Jean Bernard Lévy extra: “After Graphitech, the generation of Waste2Glass illustrates not only the good quality of the cooperation amongst our two providers, but also the EDF Group’s dedication to the growth and industrial software of truly revolutionary solutions for the treatment of radioactive waste, a crucial situation for bringing nuclear energy into the mainstream of sustainable progress and aiding to construct a carbon-absolutely free potential.”

Researched and published by Earth Nuclear News