When it comes to dismantling nuclear power plants, metals fall into 3 main parts:
• A great deal of the metal is free of any residual radioactivity. It will therefore go through a conventional recycling process.
• Another portion is too contaminated or activated to be processed or recycled. It will be categorized as radioactive waste and sent to a radioactive waste disposal facility
• The third and final part – which represents significant volumes – has a limited level of remaining radioactivity from activation and fission products, allowing it to be recycled by remelting the steel. This process can reduce or remove radionuclides allowing the steel to be reused or recycled and therefore reduce the quantity of radioactive waste and its associated cost. Within this context, SCK CEN has launched, together with CRM, a new project, called SMELD for “State of the art Metal Melting Limiting waste during D&D”. Using a laboratory melting furnace, one of the objective of SMELD is to get a better understanding of the movements of certain radioisotopes during the melting process that will help determining parameters/methods during melting to optimize the process, i.e. to reduce the radioactive waste quantity and improve the circular economy.
Within this context, applicants are invited for a full-time Postdoctoral Research Position to work on the new dynamic SMELD project. In this Post Doc project, the evaluation of the behavior of different types and grades of steels during remelting and the impact of these different types and grades on the recycling product using analytical and experimental approaches towards the metal melting will be studied. In particular, the impact of steel grades on the radionuclides partition to the slag during melting will also be investigated. Eventually, the remelting of a mix of different grades and types of steel will also be investigated. The role encourages the interdisciplinary interaction as for instance liaising with thermodynamic modelling support team for pre simulations and or validation of the theoretical and experimental approaches.
Het vereiste minimumdiploma van de kandidaat
- PhD
De vereiste achtergrondkennis van de kandidaat
- Chemistry
- <p>Metallurgy</p>