China's policy of the back end of nuclear fuel cycle

The nuclear industry of China was founded in 1955. During 40 years, a complete nuclear industry system, covering uranium resource exploration, uranium ore mining and processing, conversion and enrichment, nuclear fuel fabrication, nuclear reactor, irradiated fuel reprocessing, isotope production and application, and irradiation application has been built up. A relative complete system of regulation and standard has also been established. The estimated capacity of nuclear power in China will reach 20 000 MW by 2010 and 40 000 MW by 2020 respectively. The following policy of nuclear fuel cycle and rad waste management has been set up: 1)utilizing nuclear resource in full 2)reducing the costs of uranium exploration, mining, processing, conversion and enrichment 3)reprocessing the spent fuel 4)developing MOX fuel fabrication and fast reactor 5)minimizing the rad waste generated 6)vitrifying the high level liquid waste 7)regional disposing low and intermediate level waste in near surface 8)centralized disposing high level waste in geological repository. The reasons for China to select reprocessing instead of final disposal is described. In order to meet the requirement of the development of the nuclear power plants, it is estimated that a large scale civil reprocessing plant (400 or 800 THM/a) shall be built in the first or second decade of the next century. At the moment, a pilot reprocessing with design capacity of 300 kg/d has been decided to built. It will be put into operation at the beginning of the next century. From a long-term consideration, China will apply the civil plutonium from nuclear power plants to fabricate MOX fuel for PWR and FBR, therefore, China is currently considering to build a MOX fuel demonstration facility at appropriate time. At last, in order to protect human health and the environment now and in the future and ensure the smooth development of nuclear power and nuclear technology, China attaches importance to rad waste management. China has then set up many relevant regulations and standards in the recent years. (O.M.)