Education and Training Series #16: SUSTAINABILITY, A RELEVANT APPROACH FOR DEFINING FUTURE NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLES
Part of a webinar series hosted by the GIF Education and Training Working Group since 2016.
Who should attend?
Policymakers, industry professionals, regulators, researchers, students, the general public.
About the "GIF Education and Training" Webinars
These webinars, organised by the GIF Education and Training Working Group are streamed live monthly. The recordings and slide decks are accessible after the webinar on this website. These webinars cover a very broad range of technical and policy related topics. At the end of 2023 they have been viewed by more than 15000 people (approximately half of the views during the live streams and the other half views being of the archives on the public GIF website). In total, the GIF webinars have reached Generation IV enthusiasts, scientists, and engineers in more than 80 countries.
These webinars are organised and hosted by the GIF Education and Training Working Group (ETWG).
About this Webinar
Technically, nuclear energy is anticipated to be one of the most efficient energy source to mitigate the global climate change together with the renewables, due to its low green-house-gases emissions, its reliability and its high base-load capacity. However, public opinion survey and phase-out decision regularly reminds us that political decisions are not only driven by technical criteria. Beyond the well-known technical and economic optimization, many other criteria are of growing importance such as environmental and social concerns. This rather recent situation requires changing our rationale technical approach to the wider sustainability approach, which also includes the overall environmental footprint and the more general social acceptability and social impact. This presentation will illustrate how sustainability can help us to identify the most promising trends for future nuclear fuel cycles in order to ensure a long-term future of nuclear energy.
Presentation made during the webinar
Meet the presenter
Christophe POINSSOT has been working at CEA (The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission) for more than 25 years in fuel cycle R&D. He is currently heading the Research Department on Mining and Fuel Recycling Processes (DMRC), and is in charge of developing actinides recycling processes and operating the Atalante hot-lab. He is also a CEA international expert in actinides chemistry and professor in nuclear chemistry at INSTN. He graduated from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris. He obtained his PhD in Material Science in 1997 at the University Pierre & Marie Curie (Paris) and his Habilitation Degree in Chemistry in 2007. He first worked during 15 years on the French geological disposal program. He first launched in 1998 and coordinated the French research program on spent nuclear fuel long-term evolution in storage and disposal. In 2003, he took the responsibility of the Service for the studies of the radionuclides behavior in CEA Saclay where he also coordinated the CEA research on geological repository, including the contribution to the underground research experiments. In 2008, he joined the CEA Marcoule where he was successively the deputy head, then the head of the Radiochemistry and Processes Department in charge of the Atalante operation and the development of the reprocessing processes. His responsibility is extended to the whole recycling activities with the creation in 2017 of the DMRC department. Dr. Poinssot has long been involved in teaching, currently on nuclear fuel cycle strategy in several chemical engineering schools and universities in France. He is the (co)author of more than 50 scientific papers and 100 oral communications in international conferences. He has been decorated as “Chevalier des Palmes Académiques” in 2016 and awarded for the Roger Van Geen Chair by SCK-CEN, FNRS and FNO in 2017.