SPECIAL REPORT | RECYCLING MATERIALS
● Large amounts of concrete debris arises from nuclear decommissioning. Buildings are typically cleared after activity measurements and after demolition concrete is then treated as conventional building rubble and – as at Sizewell above - recycled accordingly. At Ringhals, Sweden, concrete structures were cut into smaller pieces and cleared individually. Both methods have been applied in Belgium.
● At Vandellos 1, 77 kilotonnes of concrete from building structures and 1.9 kilotonnes of cleared concrete from active areas was reused on site for land restoration.
● Crushing of concrete could also allow separation of fine aggregate from coarse aggregate fractions. The NEA says that contamination typically penetrates fine (porous) aggregates, but not denser coarse ones, which can be cleared and recycled.
Construction of Sizewell A began in 1960. Today, its fabric is forming part of the UK’s newest reactor development. Source: Site Stakeholder Group.
The 1996 report focused entirely on recycling and
reuse of metals. Metals are expensive compared to other construction materials and are often relatively easy to decontaminate. Melting also simplifies reprocessing and recycling of metals and this process is well-established within conventional waste management. It is therefore not surprising that the questionnaire in the 2017 report indicate that metals (steel in particular), are the most commonly recycled and reused materials. Steel is the most abundant metal in decommissioning waste and the most commonly recycled. Copper is recycled due to its relatively high value while lead and aluminium are recycled since their properties (chemotoxicity and hydrogen gas production, respectively) are undesirable in repositories for radioactive waste. The revised NEA report noted a variety of reuse and
recycling experience listed in questionnaire responses: ● At Stade, Germany, 13 kilotonnes of scrap metal were
dismantled by 2014 and 30% sent for melting—an option that is useful for scrap with complex geometry and hard- to-reach surfaces.
● In Spain, decommissioning of Vandellos 1 around 8 kilotonnes of material (mostly metals) from the active area has been sent for recycling, along with 8 kilotonnes from conventional areas.
● There are also examples of recycling and reuse of metals without clearance, for use as radiation shielding or in radioactive waste containers. Socodei in France uses scrap metal from nuclear installations to produce integrated radiation protection in waste packages.
● Recycling and reuse of lead as shielding material within the nuclear sector has been applied at SCK•CEN, Belgium and the dismantling of accelerators in Saclay, France. Spain’s Vandellos 1 sent 72t of contaminated ferrous material was sent to EnergySolutions in the US where it was melted and used to manufacture shielding for the Fermi Laboratory in Chicago.
More than 15,000 tonnes of crushed concrete from the demolished turbine alternator plinths at Sizewell A were transferred to the main construction area at Sizewell C. Source: UK NRS/NDA.
36 | October 2026 |
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For large metal components, clearance and recycling of the whole may be cheaper than segmentation and melting. At Ringhals, six decommissioned BWR turbine rotors were cleared and sent for recycling. The turbine blades were removed and the rotors decontaminated using wiping and chemical treatment followed by blasting. All six rotors, 360t in total, were cleared and sent to a conventional recycler, at a third or a quarter the cost of offsite segmentation and melting. At Berkeley, UK, 15 boilers (heat exchangers for the Magnox plants) were dismantled and transported to Studsvik, Sweden, where they were segmented and steel-shot blasted to meet clearance criteria. Around 95% of the incoming weight of each boiler could be cleared. Copper for clearance and recycling is typically found in
cables that can be cleared intact and sent for conventional recycling or the cables can be processed (to separate copper from the plastic insulation) and the material fractions cleared separately. The latter approach has the advantage that, in some cases, the copper wire can be cleared even if the other material fractions do not meet clearance levels for unconditional clearance, but it requires dedicated cable granulation equipment on-site. Both approaches have been used at WAK, Germany, to send 4.15t of copper for recycling. Recycling of aluminium is attractive from an
environmental and economical point of view given the high energy required to produce aluminium from bauxite ore. In disposal facilities it risks rapid hydrogen production during oxidation. At the Ningyo-Toge uranium enrichment plants in Japan, aluminium from gas centrifuges was cleared to meet recycling requirements. However, due to lack of public acceptance, no conventional recycler would accept the material. As a consequence 11t of the aluminium was reused for the construction of flower beds at the uranium gallery site for visits to the Ningyo-Toge centre. In the 1996 report, it was suggested that the conservative
clearance levels proposed by the IAEA would prohibit recycling. The 2017 report found unconditional clearance is utilised in most decommissioning projects. Most of the material will be clean or only slightly contaminated. So, although regulatory clearance levels may be a measurement challenge, they do not seem to prevent clearance and recycling. The conclusion in the 1996 report that metals were the most important material to recycle and reuse, due to their relatively high cost and due to environmental and safety aspects of producing new material from ore, was considered still valid in 2017. But the recycling of concrete has also become increasingly important. ■
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