The Environmental Results

Abstract

The reactor did not experience any clad failures and the fission products (excluding tritium) thus remained confined in the sub-assemblies. As to gaseous releases, they are almost nil in operations, with values just at the limit of what can be measured. Moreover, most of tritium is trapped in sodium purification cold traps. As for liquid effluents, they are essentially related to washing operations, therefore, at SUPERPHENIX, to sub-assembly washing since no large component had been washed. For conventional solid waste, they are of the same order as those of a pressurized water or conventional thermal plant with a similar size. As to nuclear waste, with present standards, they would have been, to a large extent, classified as TFA (very low activity, VLLW). The choice of a pool reactor, with no primary sodium outlet, does highly limit the dosimetry for the staff. The average dose taken by EDF employees per year was only a fraction of that taken during a Paris-to-Tokyo flight. Moreover, premises radiological cleanliness was excellent, with 85 % of premises in controlled zone, which were conventional waste zones. At comparable power, SFR heat releases are lower than for PWRs, due to a plant better net efficiency: 39 % for Superphenix (almost 42 % for Phenix) and approximately 34 % for a PWR plant. As a conclusion, during operations, Superphenix was having good environmental performances.