During the operation of a nuclear power plant, low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste is generated in various forms. These wastes must be characterized, sorted, treated and disposed of in a designated repository or released into the environment if their nature and legislation permit. The aim of any nuclear power plant operator is to minimize the quantity of this waste and therefore the use of the repository, the burden on the environment, but also to optimize the management of this waste so as to reduce the radiation burden on workers handling this waste. New computational and measurement methods, processing techniques, automation, AI, etc. allow significant progress to be made in this direction. The project focuses on research and development in the field of radioactive waste (RAW) management, mainly during the operation of the nuclear power plant, but also partly during its decommissioning. The team will be concerned with finding new or innovative methods for the management of plastic radioactive waste, in particular plastic foils, their effective measurement, characterization, partial decontamination and partial recycling; similarly, contaminated waste in the form of insulation materials will also be studied. Methods will be sought to separate contaminated and non-contaminated parts, to separate them, to measure them and thus to minimize this type of waste overall. Furthermore, procedures for the measurement and computer simulation of large volume, mostly metallic, wastes will be studied and developed with the aim of minimizing the management of these wastes, in particular fragmentation. Other objectives of the project are to establish quantitative conditions for waste recycling and optimization of radiation protection.

Keywords
radioactive waste management; low and intermidiate level radwaste; radwaste; radwaste minimization; Monte Carlo radiation transport calculation