Assessment of RepU Recycling Contribution to ESG Performance in French Nuclear Power Plant with a LCA “Pilot Study”

Although nuclear energy is acknowledged for its low CO2 emission, the fuel cycle front-end footprint can be further decreased through the use of recycled nuclear material resulting from spent fuel reprocessing.This paper presents a typical case of footprint reduction obtained with the use of Reprocessed Uranium (RepU) in Cruas French Nuclear Power Plant.The demonstration is based on a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) screening study, also called "pilot study" in the paper, realized following LCA general method with Simapro LCA software and ecoinvent 3.6 Database.Its main result is a significant decrease of climate change indicator (around 40%) compared to the 2022 EDF nuclear kWh LCA study.The calculation was extended by integrating two other LCA indicators, "particle matter/respiratory inorganics" and "resource depletion", for exploratory purposes.This pilot study will be improved as new data become available, with the purpose to lead to a standardized LCA study.It will also be a tool to identify and to quantify ways to further reduce RepU fuel cycle environmental footprint.