idw – Informationsdienst Wissenschaft
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Is permanent storage the only strategy for dealing with nuclear waste? No, says Prof. Kristina Kvashnina of the Helmholtz-Zentrum-Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR). With the aid of new EU funding, she wants to investigate the options for recycling some elements of nuclear waste using novel separation techniques – because old nuclear fuels contain important raw materials, not just for nuclear energy. For the next three years, 2.3 million euros in funding have recently been made available for the project “MaLaR – Novel 2D-3D Materials for Lanthanide Recovery from nuclear waste”. In addition to Germany, the partners are France, Sweden and Romania.
What is supposed to be recycled are lanthanides, a group of chemical elements which include some rare earths. They are widely used, for example, in screens, batteries, magnets, contrast media and biological probes. “Lanthanides are a very rare raw material, most of which comes from China. That’s why we are trying to recycle this raw material from waste, even from nuclear waste,” explains Kvashnina, the coordinator of the MaLaR Project. The physicist belongs to HZDR’s Institute of Resource Ecology and holds a professorship at the Université Grenoble Alpes in France.
In order to recycle waste, it has to be separated. Apart from the basic safety risks associated with radioactive elements, there is a special problem with nuclear waste: The materials it contains exhibit very similar chemical reactions. “That’s why it’s very difficult to find something which only causes a reaction in one element and not in others so that you can extract just the one,” explains Kvashnina. Existing separation processes often involve dangerous chemicals, use a great deal of energy and result in additional waste streams.
Carbon materials as specific element scavengers
The MaLaR Consortium is working on an innovative procedure. The idea is to develop novel three-dimensional materials as the crucial tool for effective, environmentally friendly, sustainable separation methods. This applies both to nuclear waste and industrial waste, such as radiomedical applications. Just as in the current separation methods, the researchers are building on the principle of sorption: specific radioactive elements in liquid nuclear waste attach themselves to the neighboring solid phase of a sorbent and can thus be separated from the rest of the waste.
In recent years, studies have shown that graphene oxides – carbon-based porous materials – can significantly outperform the most important industrial sorbents or radio nuclides currently in use. Moreover, it recently emerged that certain changes in the electronic structure further increase sorption performance. In the MaLaR project, Kvashnina and her partners want to systematically explore the underlying chemical reactions and develop new materials based on graphene oxide that can serve as specific element scavengers.
Getting a grip on nuclear and industrial waste
“Our aim is to design a material with which we can initially extract individual elements from synthetic element mixtures. In the future, that could then be transferred to various applications. Admittedly, in three years we can only take the first step toward recycling, but if we are successful, applications will be within easy reach,” Kvashnina emphasizes. The impact would be enormous because the novel separation methods would not only help with the recovery of raw materials from nuclear and other industrial waste, but also with the safe final storage of highly radioactive waste, for example if isotopes with different lifetimes can be separated and then stored separately. The project explicitly aims to develop appropriate close-to-the-market technological solutions.
The MaLaR-Team can rely on its partners’ expertise in several different worlds: in 2D/3D materials development, fundamental physics and the chemistry of radioactive elements as well as the possibility of using a new in-situ method for the time-resolved investigation of the tiniest concentrations of lanthanides in radioactive materials.
“It’ll be great to spend the next few years working in this team. We can combine fundamental insights from experiments with theoretical calculations and models as well as material characterization and development,” says Kvashnina enthusiastically. As part of the project, she will also be in charge of experiments at HZDR’s Rossendorf Beamline (ROBL) at the European Synchrotron (ESRF) in Grenoble where the new materials will be tested for their chemical properties using intensive x-ray light.
Background
The MaLaR project started on January 1st, 2025. Via the European EURATOM Program, HZDR and the following partners will receive 2.3 million euros over a period of three years:
Marcoule Institute in Separation Chemistry, University of Montpellier and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France
Universities of Umeå and Uppsala in Sweden
University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest in Romania
At HZDR, most of the work will be conducted in an alpha-lab in Dresden-Rossendorf and at the ROBL Beamline in Grenoble.
Additional information:
Prof. Kristina Kvashnina
Institute of Resource Ecology at HZDR
Phone: +33 476 88 2367 | Email: kristina.kvashnina@esrf.fr
Media contact:
Simon Schmitt | Head
Communications and Media Relations at HZDR
Phone: +49 351 260 3400 | Mobile: +49 175 874 2865 | Email: s.schmitt@hzdr.de
The Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) performs – as an independent German research center – research in the fields of energy, health, and matter. We focus on answering the following questions:
• How can energy and resources be utilized in an efficient, safe, and sustainable way?
• How can malignant tumors be more precisely visualized, characterized, and more effectively treated?
• How do matter and materials behave under the influence of strong fields and in smallest dimensions?
To help answer these research questions, HZDR operates large-scale facilities, which are also used by visiting researchers: the Ion Beam Center, the Dresden High Magnetic Field Laboratory and the ELBE Center for High-Power Radiation Sources.
HZDR is a member of the Helmholtz Association and has six sites (Dresden, Freiberg, Görlitz, Grenoble, Leipzig, Schenefeld near Hamburg) with almost 1,500 members of staff, of whom about 680 are scientists, including 200 Ph.D. candidates.
Prof. Kristina Kvashnina
Institute of Resource Ecology at HZDR
Phone: +33 476 88 2367 | Email: kristina.kvashnina@esrf.fr
https://www.hzdr.de/presse/malar
Prof. Kristina Kvashnina
Denis Morel
Denis Morel/HZDR
Criteria of this press release:
Journalists
Chemistry, Energy, Environment / ecology, Physics / astronomy
transregional, national
Research projects
English
Prof. Kristina Kvashnina
Denis Morel
Denis Morel/HZDR
You can combine search terms with and, or and/or not, e.g. Philo not logy.
You can use brackets to separate combinations from each other, e.g. (Philo not logy) or (Psycho and logy).
Coherent groups of words will be located as complete phrases if you put them into quotation marks, e.g. “Federal Republic of Germany”.
You can also use the advanced search without entering search terms. It will then follow the criteria you have selected (e.g. country or subject area).
If you have not selected any criteria in a given category, the entire category will be searched (e.g. all subject areas or all countries).
