Synthesis of the technical feasibility evaluation of spent fuel conditioning in Belgium

At the end of 1993 the Belgian government decided that both reprocessing and direct disposal have to be considered as equal options in the back-end policy for spent fuel in Belgium. As a result of this decision Synatom, the Belgian utilities' subsidiary in charge of the nuclear fuel cycle for all PWR reactors in Belgium, entrusted the engineering companies Tractebel and Belgonucleaire to develop a dedicated spent fuel container, to perform a feasibility study of an appropriate encapsulation process and to perform a preliminary design study of a complete spent fuel conditioning plant. The feasibility and design studies of the Open Cycle project started mid 1994 and came to an end, as scheduled, by the end of 97. The design of the spent fuel container was presented at the ICEM '97 Conference in Singapore in a paper called 'Development of a container for spent nuclear fuel disposal in clay'. The present paper is dealing mainly with the demonstration of the feasibility of the process and a brief description of the design of the conditioning facilities. (author)