Team:Lyon-INSA-ENS/Project/Industrialization

Previous brainstorming

---

The “Cobalt Buster” project is based on a modified ''Esherichia coli'' strain able to capture and concentrate cobalt from its environment. The use of this strain as biofilter may increase the life of ion exchange resins and reduce significantly costs and volumes of radioactive waste. Indeed a previous modelization estimated that :

4 kg of modified bacteria = 8000 kg of ion exchange resins

It is known that a pulse of radioactive Cobalt emission occurs in the primary circuit of water, during the maintenance of nuclear power plants when they open the reactor core. This pulse damages the ion exchange resin used to filter the water and reduce its radioactive level.

That is why we first thought using the "Cobalt Buster" biofilter upstream of the ion exchange resin the rehabilitation of effluents in nuclear reactors, and especially in the primary circuit during the maintenance of nuclear power plants.