Treatment and conditioning processes for low and medium activity waste

Under the European Communities ''R and D Programme on Management and Disposal of Radioactive Waste'' various treatment and conditioning processes for the management of alpha waste in line with different objectives (i.e. volume reduction, splitting of activity, direct conditioning) are being developed and assessed. For liquid waste, these involve the use of solvent extraction, inorganic ion exchangers and chemical precipitation possibly combined with denitration or ultrafiltration. Regarding plutonium contaminated solids, the processes deal with acid digestion, simple leaching or washing, high temperature incineration and pyrolysis/char oxidation. Scope and respective performance of each of these processes are presented