Nuclear for Energy and the Environment

The first sub-axis concerns materials for nuclear power, the nuclear fuel cycle, radioactive waste disposal and the migration of radionuclides either into the environment or into solids such as glass, concrete and geological substrates. It is an activity organised within the scope of two IN2P3 master-projects: i) "Materials" on the themes of cements, glasses and materials containing zirconium and ii) "Radionuclides and the environment" studying natural (TE)-NORM or anthropogenic radionuclides as well as geological barriers against the migration of these radionuclides. Ensuring very high visibility, and even national and international leadership, the work is carried out in the context of a chair with Andra, ORANO and EDF, or in European projects such as EURAD and PREDIS and the RETENTION, TIRAMISU, UTOPIA, and STOL projects in collaboration with other regional or national units such as OSUNA, LPG, or ZATU and international collaborations around the consequences of the Fukushima accident in Japan. Finally, in this first sub-axis, Subatech is developing projects within the framework of two other cross-cutting master-projects that address the issue of theoretical modelling and radiolysis phenomena. Subatech's SMART platform provides a radioactivity measurement service for industrial partners, associations and local authorities; it holds 47 ASN accreditations, an accreditation from the Ministry of Health, allowing radiological measurements to be carried out on water intended for human consumption, and COFRAC accreditation. The second sub-field concerns the physics and simulation of nuclear reactors with two complementary approaches: i) The combination of our strong involvement in the TAGS collaboration to study the properties of radionuclides produced in reactors, our expertise in reactor simulation inherited from the developments carried out for Double Chooz, Nucifer and Solid and now applied to the new generations of reactors, with our summation calculations gives us a world-renowned expertise for calculations associated with antineutrinos (non-proliferation), residual power and delayed neutrons (safety) of nuclear reactors (European projects and master-projects SANDA and SAMOSAFER, NEEDS projects NACRE and SUDEC, collaborations with IAEA, NEA and JEFF, Master-projects TAGS and OPALE) with the Accelerator Laboratory of the University of Jyväskylä ii) the other approach, the interdisciplinary study of nuclear scenarios at the scale of a nation in interaction with other disciplines such as sociology or economics, via the MOISE project.